The Shining Week
by MercedesCarello
Summary: Team Guy have been tasked with finding and returning the granddaughter of General Mifune; due to the lack of information surrounding her disappearance, he suspects she went willingly. A clue may lie in her calling to become a traditional shinobi rather than a samurai. Can she be found before war arrives, and will she be willing to return? [Set during timeskip.]
1. No Clues, No Motive

**Chapter 1: No Clues, No Motive**

"Oh it's so good to be out of the cold!" Tenten sighed gratefully as the door whispered shut behind them, securing the howling gale outside with the snow it carried. Melting clumps of it fell off them as they removed jackets and shoes.

"I imagine Leaf folk, even shinobi, must not be accustomed to the snow," offered the attendant with a smile.

He was right, but Neji wasn't about to admit to it.

"Does it snow like this all the time?" Lee asked.

"Often, but this is a little late in the year for the heavier storms. We're thankful you were able to make it before it got worse!"

"We're sorry for the late arrival," said Neji.

"No need - this way please. The General welcomes you."

As they were led through the General's house to the receiving room, seated, and provided tea, Neji reflected on what the Hokage had already divulged to them regarding their mission in the Land of Iron. It hadn't been much, really. A time-sensitive missing-person's case; Team Guy had just returned from another mission and were the only ones available. While none of them had ever been to the Land of Iron, the three of them had been briefed on its political neutrality and its preference for samurai over traditional shinobi. Beyond these facts, they weren't sure what to expect and were keen to absorb any information they could despite their tiredness.

"My apologies for having kept you waiting - truth be told I thought to expect you tomorrow on account of the storm," said the tall, regal man who entered, who could only be General Mifune.

The trio bowed deeply to the elder. "General," Neji greeted. They rose. "We were instructed that time was of the essence, so we came as soon as we can."

"The level of discipline I would expect from the Leaf," the General said as he sat across from them. Although the deep wrinkles under his eyes made his long face a rather stern one, it was broken by a warm smile. Light from the oil lamps in the corners of the room glimmered on the dark gray hair about his shoulders. "I'm grateful that you've come."

"Maybe you can tell us more about your request, General? The Hokage was...very brief," said Tenten and folded her hands in her lap.

The General took his own tea into his hands. "I should begin by saying that this mission must be treated delicately and, moreover, in complete confidentiality. And it is, as Lady Tsunade says, time-sensitive - I expect it to be accomplished as soon as possible."

"Understood," said Neji. This was nothing he hadn't expected.

"Who is it that's missing?" Lee asked.

The General finished a sip of his tea and, without opening his eyes, said gravely, "My granddaughter."

Tenten let out a soft, sympathetic sigh and asked, "How long has she been gone?"

"I'd say nearly two years, now." Following the confused silence in the room, the General added, "Of course we tried searching for her before, to no avail. Gone without a trace - unusual, knowing my granddaughter, which has led me to suspect she went willingly rather as a victim of a kidnap. No ransom demanded, no clues, no motive."

"Then, why the sudden request after two years? And why contract Leaf shinobi?" Neji asked.

"It has taken this long for rumors to emerge - first in the Land of Waterfalls, and most recently in the Land of Earth. As you know, the Land of Iron prefers to keep to itself and as such, does not like to be seen crossing borders, even for trade. Considering the nature of the mission we thought it best to contract the Leaf," said the General. He set his tea on the table.

"You said she may have left willingly?" Lee prompted.

At this the General shifted uncomfortably, which intrigued Neji. He disguised it somewhat by pulling a small photograph out of his robe and sliding it across the table to them. "Hitomi was not a difficult child, but she was given a difficulty by having a gift and the fierce drive to explore it. Although trained in the way of the samurai, she felt that her calling was that of a traditional shinobi."

Neji picked up the sepia-toned photograph, holding it with both hands in order to hold it taut, as it seemed even such a small photograph had been folded into a quarter of its size in the past. The girl pictured was maybe a few years younger than they were, unsmiling, with dark hair and her grandfather's long face, dressed in a formal kimono with a katana across her lap. On the back was written 'Age ten. My memory.' in faded ink. Neji passed it to Tenten.

"That was taken some years ago," the General noted. "I imagine she's about your age, now."

"So she may have left to train to become a kunoichi?" Tenten surmised. She passed the photograph behind Neji's back to Lee.

The General hummed an assent. "Early on Hitomi demonstrated an affinity for a type of senjutsu, in particular Substitution jutsu. But of course we lacked anyone to teach her, and furthermore, it is not our way. I tried to channel her abilities into our Samurai Way, but it doesn't seem as though it were enough."

Neji considered this. Although it had been a while since he'd read anything on the subject, from what he understood senjutsu was not something that naturally appeared in an individual without training. Furthermore, to have it then applied to Substitution jutsu, of all things?

 _There are definitely pieces missing. Either the General does not know himself, or he is not telling us everything,_ he thought.

"Those rumors you talked about - could you tell us more?" Lee asked. He passed the photograph back to the General.

"We received word that she had been seen in a small town near the Earth/Waterfall border - Yatsu - wearing a green kimono. It appears also that she has at least one other person with her, possibly a retainer of some kind, though no other members of our household or indeed of the capital are missing to our knowledge. It did not seem as though they were simply passing through," the General said.

"So then we look there first," Tenten said to Neji and Lee.

Neji nodded.

"Please rest for the night before you begin. Yatsu is at least a couple of days away," invited the General. He stood, and they took their cue to rise and bow.

"One other thing, General," said Lee. "It's possible that she may attempt to disguise herself. Is there anything telling about her, would you say?"

The General considered a moment. "I suppose she wouldn't be able to change those green eyes of her father's. Otherwise, she took nothing with her, and wasn't one for sentimental objects, unlike me." He glanced at the photograph one more time before concealing it in his robe again.

The four said their goodnights, and an attendant led the Leaf trio away through the house to the guest quarters for the night while the wind continued to howl outside. Neji listened to it while Tenten slept and Lee did his end-of-day lifts.

 _The Hokage must have known to one extent or another that we would potentially be tracking down a senjutsu user - I'm sure that's another reason for the Land of Iron to involve traditional shinobi,_ Neji thought. _But such specialism usually denotes a higher level of expertise. Unless she and the General expect Miss Hitomi to be agreeable, this mission could become a B-rank or higher._ He glanced to his left at Tenten and Lee. _We've improved much over the last year or so, but they're still only Chunin. We have no sure way of knowing what we're up against._

* * *

For so blustery a storm the previous night, the following morning was remarkably calm. The temperature was mild enough to sit on the veranda overlooking the courtyard garden during breakfast and a few small drifts of snow edged the firs; the sound of their gradual melting was a pleasant drip-drop in the sunshine. The sun itself had only just risen above the crest of the roof of the General's house and steam from the food and the tea rose to meet it.

The housekeeper placed the last of the bowls on the table in front of them. "The General sends his regrets that he could not join you for breakfast," the older woman said. "He had something urgent to take care of this morning." She stood upright. "It's fine news that you'll be bringing Lady Hitomi back to us. We have missed her singing. Thank you from all of us." She bowed and left them.

Tenten said, "I gathered a little more information earlier from one of the housemaids, in case it was useful. Seems Miss Hitomi was fairly accomplished in both her studies and swordsmanship; the katana in the photograph was hers - she must have left it behind deliberately, for some reason - and the maid showed it to me. Her parents died when she was ten, but weren't shinobi. The maid said despite losing them Miss Hitomi never seemed unhappy or out of sorts, though she wasn't exactly cheerful to begin with. Superstitious, too. Everything was normal until she disappeared a few days after her thirteenth birthday. She had a good life here, even if it wasn't what she wanted."

Neji mulled this vague information over. "'Is accomplished'," he said at length.

"Eh?" Tenten repeated.

"She's not dead," Neji said.

There was a moment of awkward quiet, which Lee then broke with, "If she was good with a katana, perhaps you'll get along, Tenten!"

"Yeah, maybe."

"It still seems strange that Miss Hitomi would suddenly leave on her own without warning and get so far by herself without leaving a trace," Lee said.

"We're all more unpredictable when we're young," said Neji, "it could have been a passing whim."

"But she was so confident that she didn't take her sword or any other means of arming herself with her?" Tenten countered. "She wasn't a kunoichi of any level when she left, and training as an Iron samurai relies on weaponry."

"What bothers me more is who she may have met, who is with her now," said Neji.

In the contemplative minutes that followed they finished their breakfast of rice and grilled fish. Crows called overhead, but Neji was soon distracted from them by soft footsteps approaching. Another servant had appeared carrying a katana in its scabbard. He knelt in front of Neji and raised it between them; steam from his rice bowl fogged on the oxblood-colored lacquer and bronze ginkgo-leaf inlays. A green tassel swung from the white braided hilt.

"The General feels it may be useful for you to take Lady Hitomi's sword with you," said the manservant. "Remind her of home, perhaps."

Neji was doubtful it would do any good, but recognized the hope in the man's voice and, not wishing to slight their client, accepted the sword. "Very intuitive of him. We will keep it safe." This servant, too, bowed and left, and once he was gone Neji set the sword beside him. "We should hurry."


	2. Good and Bad Luck

**Chapter 2: Good and Bad Luck**

The westerly journey from the Land of Iron through the Land of Waterfalls passed without incident, and the trio found themselves approaching the border with the Land of Earth on the morning of the second day. They had safely skirted the Hidden Waterfall village without raising alarm, and followed the river somewhat north and over the border to Yatsu, reaching it by evening of the third day. Rain arrived with them in the small, quiet town nestled in the folds of meadow- and marshland.

"Yatsu doesn't seem like much," Tenten observed as they walked up the single, barely-cobbled street. "Why would she suddenly stop her travels here?"

"Maybe something in the area, or a reason to wait?" Lee suggested.

They paused on a corner to a smaller side-street. Neji looked around at Yatsu. The locals seemed friendly enough and did not pay them any attention, too wrapped up in some kind of small summer harvest celebration. There were none that looked like shinobi. Most of the buildings were of simple though permanent construction and without electricity, with mud tile roofs. The main street seemed to harbor the scant few businesses while the three side streets he could see led off into residential dwellings. From what he could tell with the lay of the land, the main street eventually led out of Yatsu proper and sloped downward into the floodplain of a set of waterfalls coming down from higher ground in the distance. Like the hem of a robe, one edge of this floodplain had been converted into tiers for rice paddies, and there was a small ferry on the river should one choose another, smaller dirt road to go south, presumably toward the Land of Grass.

"It will be easier to gather information and appear inconspicuous if we stay at the inn," Neji said and nodded across the street at one of the taller buildings.

Lee and Tenten adopted smiles as they maneuvered their way through the throng of villagers bearing lanterns, who congratulated a lucky fisherman who held aloft the largest blackfish Neji had ever seen. Another villager was calling to onlookers that it was, at last, the first of the season and a good omen on account of the green smudge on its head. Someone brought out a small drum and another a gong.

Neji was grateful when they reached the inn and the noise passed on down the street. The innkeeper did not ask them many questions or look at them in any way suspiciously as they managed to secure two rooms; he even encouraged them to head next door to the local watering hole. as the good news of the blackfish likely meant the barkeep would open the good sake and generously. So there they went, despite none of them being drinkers.

The teahouse - a two-story affair with an upper, open mezzanine holding oil lamps over those below - was only moderately full, and efficiently-staffed; it wasn't long before the three of them had warm tea and dumplings set in front of them. It also wasn't long before another villager came in and re-announced the lucky smudge on the blackfish's head, which brought a fresh round of cheers and relieved sighs.

"It seems the village has good news?" Tenten prompted another guest - of a group of four - at the table next to them. Neji resettled, content to let her steer the conversation to what they were after.

"Oh yes! A blackfish that size with the thumbprint of the gods - there's sure to be a good harvest this autumn, of land and sea," he replied.

Tenten's further, careful probing was interrupted by the sudden cry across the large room, "Miss! Miss! Could you give us another song? It's such good news! Your singing was lovely yesterday. Could we have it again?"

Neji scanned the room. More toward the center was a group of three young women and two men, and one of the women was being cajoled into standing. She was smiling shyly.

Lee leaned in and whispered urgently, "The green kimono!"

The three of them tensed, even as the happy song began. It was indeed a good voice, Neji conceded, and the woman did seem similar to the Miss Hitomi pictured in her grandfather's photograph. The kimono was indeed a vivid shade of green to match her eyes.

"We have a problem," he said as he looked at those that accompanied her. _Of course it was too easy to run into her as soon as we get here._

The other two women were also green-eyed, with pale skin and dark hair, the same build and age. They were just different enough to rule out shadow clones. Upon activating his Byakugan, Neji could not distinguish any notable difference between their chakras, which were notably average to the point of being civilian. Any of them could be the teenaged Miss Hitomi.

"Surely it's the one that sings, then?" Tenten said hopefully.

The three of them gave crestfallen groans when the other two women joined in with the song in equally-pleasant voices. The singing was attracting more patrons inside, much to the owner's delight.

"Their chakras are the same, too. Unless Miss Hitomi has found some way to conceal her chakra from even me, it seems she hasn't become a kunoichi," Neji said.

"The Byakugan sees everything, and green eyes aren't that common," Lee said to himself.

"It's amazing she found one potential decoy much less two," Tenten sighed. "Are we sure she's an only child?"

"We'll need to think of something different to identify her," said Neji. "But let's not rush into it and alert her. Whichever one she is. We'll gather information independently if we need to, and shadow one each." 

* * *

It was late when the trio finally convened in one of the rooms. While the merry crowd in the teahouse had made it easier for them to separate and surreptitiously gather more information about the three women, it had yielded very little. The search had ended when the party had retreated to the same inn for the night, which was the only blessing.

"Sisters, apparently," said Tenten, who had managed to get the closest. She kept her voice low on account of the thin walls. "None of them named Hitomi. The two men with them are from the same village out west. They have family in the Land of Grass; apparently this is the scenic route that they always take. The teahouse owner says they've done this for a couple of years now."

"Miss Hitomi has been missing for nearly two years," Lee said optimistically and turned to Neji.

"But we're still no closer to identifying _which_ of them may be Miss Hitomi," he said with a slight sigh. He eyed Tenten's stifled yawn. "It's late. It would be best if we continued tomorrow, refreshed. It seems the group will be leaving late in the morning. We can track them if necessary."

Tenten was already nodding and rising, retreating to her separate room. Lee shut the door behind her and began to bed down for the night. Neji recrossed his legs and prepared to meditate a little more on the matter.

"What if none of them are her?" Lee mused quietly.

Neji opened one eye. "Are you saying there's a fourth pale, dark-haired woman with green eyes in the area?"

"Maybe not, but we're still missing something."

Neji couldn't deny that. He closed his eye and breathed deep. _Is it really so hard for me to believe that this mission could be simple? That Miss Hitomi ran away for some other reason than to become a kunoichi, and took a different name? But why, then, the elaborate efforts to find doubles? Why stay so relatively close to home, when she could be on the other side of the world by now? Even if she is not among those women, it does not seem like coincidence that three of them fitting her description would suddenly appear; which means she is still likely linked to that group of travelers - we just haven't seen her yet. Unless she has managed some greater form of disguise, particularly with her chakra, that is somehow beyond the Byakugan…_ He went over again what they'd been told in the Land of Iron, what they'd discovered thus far.

Lee began snoring. As hard as Neji tried to ignore it, as always it managed to weasel its way into his brain. He hadn't realized his meditation had gone on that long.

 _I guess I'll continue investigating,_ he thought.

Quietly standing, Neji slipped out of the room. The inn was not very large, but it had enough rooms to make blindly investigating which were occupied by the sisters and their retainers difficult. Besides, it would become problematic should he be caught snooping.

 _They must have arrived by horse or cart, though. They seemed like they could afford it, and walking from the western edge of the Land of Earth to the Land of Grass is not practical. Perhaps there's something there._

Aside from the distant bark of a dog, Yatsu was sleeping peacefully in the gentle rain. Before heading for the stables, Neji dipped down the side of the inn and leapt to the overhang below the second floor. On a whim, he activated his Byakugan. He detected Lee and Tenten, the innkeeper and her husband, the three sisters and their two retainers. A third figure, however, was now retreating from the guests' hall, down the stairs and out of the back entrance. The chakra was slightly above average for a civilian, though realistically nothing noteworthy. Neji decided to follow it anyway.

In the navy shadows of the night the outline of the figure was hard to distinguish with normal eyes, but Neji let go of the Byakugan anyway. It felt like practice of a kind. The figure pulled a large sugegasa onto their head to protect them from the rain, and shortly slipped on a pair of geta, stepping out into the weather. It was impossible to tell their gender, but they were not much shorter than Neji himself. He followed the figure down the back of the buildings to the edge of town, careful to linger behind several paces despite the rain providing decent cover.

 _There's no reason for a civilian to come out this late at night, surely? Not a law-abiding one, anyhow,_ Neji thought as he lingered behind the last house.

The figure walked down the slope in the direction of the waterfalls hemming the mountains. Neji crouched low and dashed for the cover of some unkempt brush.

 _It's too risky to follow in the open like this. And I shouldn't go without backup._ He watched the barely-discernable shape get farther away. _They don't seem to be carrying anything, so maybe they're not just checking out of the inn without paying - which means they'll be back. It's more sensible to wait for their return._

Reluctantly, feeling a little foolish, Neji returned to the inn. After drying off he held vigil for the rest of the night inside his room with Lee, listening for the sound of footfalls with his head against the doorjamb.

They came near the crack of dawn; through a crack in the door Neji saw the sodden figure enter the singing sisters' room and soon after, caught a ghost of sleep.


	3. Obscurity

**Chapter 3: Obscurity**

When morning broke proper, the trio ate quickly and uneasily at the teahouse, all the while keeping an eye on the inn for the soon-to-depart singing sisters.

"Last night there was a third retainer we didn't see," Neji said over his tea, "but nothing remarkable. Nonetheless, worth noting."

"You should have been sleeping. We would have discovered that today anyhow," Tenten said.

Neji looked through the latticed window into the sunlit street, which had a haze over it due to the rain evaporating. Much of the town was slow to stir from the previous night's celebration; what little foot traffic there was did not have the strength to dispel the haze completely - it eddied in the wake of single walkers and the occasional mule, whose breath escaped in a fog to mingle with it. It seemed whatever brief warmth had been felt the day before had passed, replaced by a stubborn chill.

"I was hoping the weather would stay warmer for the rest of this mission," Tenten said under her breath and finished off her rice. "We're not _that_ far north, and it's late spring."

"At least the rain seems to be moving away," Neji offered. He didn't particularly want to listen to Tenten's complaints about the weather for the rest of the mission either - whatever factors there were to the good, the better off his ears would be.

"Ah, but it adds an extra challenge, doesn't it?" Lee said with a satisfied sigh. "If -"

"Look. There they are," Tenten thankfully said and nodded out the window.

The three sisters came into view as they exited the inn next door, smiling and laughing over some triviality. Their green kimono were bright in the sun but glowing and soft-edged in the haze, like leafbuds. Neji noted the three retainers that shadowed them in darker clothing, like treebark in contrast, carrying a few belongings - they were either turned away or hidden by bundles or sugegasa, so he had to rely on memory of their build and clothing. There were no horses, or a cart.

 _There's a chance, then, that their story of a pilgrimage was a lie,_ he thought.

The group began to walk away in the direction of the waterfalls - in the direction of the ferry. They paused to let a black cat skitter across their path.

"Let's go."

The trio followed at a distance, keeping out of sight until it was no longer practical. The drowsy sounds of Yatsu faded behind them. They paused at the last farmhouse to watch the group grow closer to the small dock, where a wide raft that served as a ferry was moored. The ferryman was sitting slumped against the lamppost, dozing, but woke when one of the retainers called to him.

"We'll have to wait for them to cross first," said Lee.

"I have an idea," said Tenten. She reached down and fiddled with something around her ankle that Neji couldn't quite see. "She's superstitious, right? Stay here - I'm the most normal of the three of us."

Tenten left them and carefully headed down the road on her own. By the time the group had reached the dock she had caught up with them, and Neji had to use the Byakugan in order to make out facial expressions and finer gestures at this distance. They seemed at ease around her, and she made sure to smile and act natural. Two of the retainers were beginning to place their belongings on the raft while the third paid the ferryman. It was at that point that Tenten, in wandering to one side a couple of steps, appeared to stumble. One of the other women helped steady her. Tenten looked down, almost comically aghast, at her left foot.

"She deliberately broke her sandal," Neji said for Lee's benefit.

"I see! Are any of them reacting?"

Neji watched the group look between sandal and boat, then amongst each other. No one person in particular seemed more concerned than the others. Sensing this, after a few long moments Tenten spoke up and waved them on, hobbling to the land-edge of the dock to sit down to fix her sandal. The group boarded the ferry and the ferryman pushed them away with a long pole.

As soon as the group had crossed the steady river, disembarked, and entered the treeline on the opposite shore, Neji turned to Lee. "Let's get across too, to keep them in sight. Tenten will catch up."

Their run took them through the bottom-most rice paddies, over the retaining bank and onto the gentle rushing of the wide-bellied river. Fish waving lazily under the water scattered from their shadows. Soon enough they too were on the opposite bank and up into the fir trees, seeking the road that led away from the dock and the travelers. They hadn't got far; the road was little more than a dirt path barely wide enough for a cart, and the group traveled single-file. Neji and Lee came to a silent stop in the evergreen canopy above. It was slightly warmer in here on account of the broad plaques of the fir needles.

"You don't think that was a bad omen for us, do you?" the shorter of the women asked. "I'd hate for things to go less than smoothly the last time we were together…" she glanced back at the middlemost retainer, whom Neji recognized as the night-wanderer by the oxblood-colored longer sleeves emerging from his black haori.

The retainer said nothing, leaving the taller one who led the way to turn and say, "Of course not. Don't speak it into existence."

There was the slightest rustle as Tenten joined them, but she waited until the travelers had drawn suitably ahead out of earshot before speaking. "All of them reacted to the same extent to my sandal breaking - it obviously gave them pause, but I couldn't say it bothered one of them more than the others," she whispered. "I was hoping to get a rise out of one of them."

"Let's hope you didn't bring bad luck on us instead," Neji said.

Tenten harrumphed. " _Anyway_ , as I was joining them I heard one of them say they'll split up tomorrow morning. So that's something."

"By 'something' you mean that it gives us less than twenty-four hours to uncover Miss Hitomi's disguise," Neji said irritably - this was already starting to go on for longer than he liked. He leapt from the branch and his teammates followed. He had only half-meant what he'd said about bad luck, but he was beginning to wonder. 

* * *

General Mifune and his most trusted captain paused in their after-lunch walk around the inner courtyard of his home. The warmth of the morning had passed into damp cold that promised rain, but not snow. He gently rubbed his hands together and tucked them inside his sleeves.

After a delicate pause, the captain ventured, "The shinobi from the Leaf must be in Yatsu by now. They may even have already made contact with Lady Hitomi."

The General hummed to himself. "You are kind to an old man, Kohaku. But you know my granddaughter as well as I. She is too smart to be caught so easily." He looked into the dull gray sky - like the clouds that obscured his view, he felt unable to see into her thoughts. His memory had been suffering more and more these past few years and without Hitomi to recall for him, he felt as though he'd missed some important clue that she might have given him.

Kohaku bowed his head, "Yes, I remember well the occasion when she beat me at shogi."

General Mifune could remember this at least, and smiled. His smile faded quickly, however - he had been thinking instead of the elaborate and bizarre way she had attempted to...rearrange and explain the deaths of her mother and father, despite having been affirmed as free of blame. Kohaku had been there that night, too, four years ago when the search party had found them near the Iron/Waterfall border. It was unsurprising that Kohaku didn't speak of it nowadays. Indeed, everyone who had been present that night preferred not to, but for Kohaku in particular it made sense to not want to dwell on the idiosyncrasies of one's future daughter-in-law.

It was the General's turn to be kind. "We made the decision regarding the engagement some months ago."

"Sir -"

He held up a hand. "Perhaps we were too hasty. I would not blame you, my friend, if you reconsidered. After all, we do not know what kind of Hitomi will be brought back to us. Much can change in two years. I would not want to force your son to marry a girl he can no longer have affection for."

Kohaku took a few steps forward, his hands behind his back. He stared out into the white, gray, black and green brushstrokes of the garden. "I had thought about that, too. But - the daughter of the head of the clan must wed. Beyond that, though, we must not forget our reasoning for it in the first place. The reason it is vital that she come back now, before it's too late." Kohaku turned to look at the General. He attempted a wan smile.

 _War,_ the General thought. If the lands did erupt in war, he could not have his only descendant wandering around in the chaos of it, capable though she might be. The Land of Iron would not be exempt from it, no matter their neutrality, and should something happen to him then Hitomi needed to be here to inherit the estate and rule in his stead. A husband would cement her claim, and his line would endure.

The General returned the smile. "And what does Noboru think?"

"He understands the situation quite well, and his duty, and is honored to serve in both," Kohaku said. "He wishes for her to be home."

The General supposed he could not have expected more than that. His smile broadened. "Good. Might I say that he is my favorite, of your three sons," he winked, "but don't tell him that. Shall we have tea?"


	4. Moonlit Confrontation

**Chapter 4: Moonlit Confrontation**

It was the second watch of the night, and the rest he'd had earlier had done nothing to abate Neji's frustration. He was even contemplating Lee's half-joking suggestion to just outright demand which of the travelers was Miss Hitomi. He kept thinking of the way the Hokage had fixed him in her gaze to wordlessly emphasize this mission's importance; he kept thinking of the General passing him the photograph and 'My memory' written on the back; he kept thinking of the earnest looks in the staff's eyes when they spoke of her sword, her singing, their readiness to have her back even after two years of growing accustomed to her absence. They had less than twenty-four hours.

 _But why split? It doesn't correlate with the story we were told - that they have family south. Though it's three shinobi for three sisters, we cannot separate our team. And I can't fail in so simple a mission._

The moon was high overhead, painting everything it could reach in silver; the travelers' camp fire gilded the immediate area. The women and one attendant were asleep on bedrolls, which left the other two retainers - one was on watch and sitting on an uprooted but still living fir, while the other was weaving pieces of dead vine. The weaver was the night-wanderer, and though his sugegasa had been removed Neji had found it unusually frustrating that his face had always been obscured or turned away. He twitched a hand irritably to dislodge a moth that had landed there and tickled his knuckle.

Then, he heard humming. Had he not been able to pinpoint the origin of the sound otherwise, he would have determined it was not either of the sisters by the quality of its timbre and its strength. It was a quiet but nonetheless clear melody, and it had a far greater talent in just those few notes compared to an entire song sung by three. He caught himself simply listening to its beauty for a few moments before he reminded himself to process this new information.

He smirked. _The true singer will be the one who sings when she does not have to._

"Not here," said the retainer on watch; the taller, oldest one.

The humming stopped. "Matters little, now," said the weaver lowly, and the rope of dead vine was dropped.

 _Wait - why would he - she - say it doesn't matter now?_ Neji's self-satisfaction dropped into caution.

No sooner had he raised a hand to wake the others when the weaver stood and turned to face their tree head-on. Neji kept very still, hoping this was a bluff of some kind or coincidence. What stared back at him had the appearance of a young man - no real shape to speak of - and the face was similarly nondescript, with dark hair and eyes. The only real clue aside from the voice that this was actually a woman was, upon closer inspection, that the hair had been braided and pinned and tied close to the head underneath a wide headband. Nonetheless, she did not look like the young girl in the General's picture.

"Show yourselves!"

She said it so robustly that the other members of the campsite began to stir and Tenten and Lee woke. The campsite looked at the weaver in confusion, and Tenten and Lee looked to Neji for guidance.

"How…?" Tenten began.

"We've found her," Neji said quietly.

"That person? It doesn't look like her. No green eyes," said Lee.

"I know," Neji said.

It was a jutsu of some kind, certainly, and it remained a mystery why it did not generate any chakra at all and went undetectable by the Byakugan. The campsite was fully awake now, with the retainer who'd been on guard coming to stand beside the weaver in front of the fire, the third retainer and the three worried women. The weaver's eyes weren't quite on Neji, but they were close.

"I said, show yourselves!" she demanded again, startling a couple of pigeons from their roost.

"We gain nothing anymore, pretending to hide," Neji said. He jumped down first onto the camp perimeter; Lee and Tenten followed. The retainers placed hands on shortsword hilts, but the weaver made no move at all. After an initial scan of the group the weaver took a second look at Neji, seeming shocked for a moment before disguising it. Neji confined the observation for later.

"Who are you? Who sent you?" she asked next.

 _So she expected to be recognized, which explains the disguise,_ Neji thought, _but she said 'sent'... She also expected to be hunted down. She must have some level of skill to not only disguise herself to this degree, but to have known we were watching and, furthermore, to be willing to give herself away, having been found. More deceptions will only equal more deceptions…_

"We're here for Lady Hitomi Mifune," he said.

"And what makes you think we have anyone here by that name?" she asked without missing a beat, though Neji didn't miss the looks the green-robed sisters gave one another. He wondered if this has been asked of them before.

Neji debated playing along, but only briefly. His gaze pinned the weaver in place. "Your grandfather sent us to bring you home. We're not here to fight."

After a pause, the weaver said, "You seem very certain you've found what you're looking for."

Neji didn't reply.

After another tense moment, one of the other women softly called, "Aoi…"

The weaver, 'Aoi', held up a hand to quiet her. She glanced at the trio in front of her, then said, "You've made a mistake."

Pale green-gold chakra erupted from the six travelers in the form of veins and scales on their skin that floated in the air and dissipated, concentrated around their faces. Neji had just enough time to see how their faces seemed to morph and change shape and color, borrowing from one another and rearranging into new ones. Six pale moths crawled out from under their collars and took flight. His attention was then taken by what was now unmistakably Lady Hitomi Mifune.

She had grabbed a branch from the ground, and in the time it took her to rise and change her handling, it had morphed from wood to shivering dirt to the tempered steel of a katana. The trio tensed, and Tenten brought out a knife. Hitomi raised the katana horizontally in front of her and as they watched, its edge began to glow white-hot until it was sputtering flames that danced in the now green eyes of a long face. The moths were flitting over her head like a halo of pieces of paper caught alight.

"Go," she intoned, "or you will not return at all, much less with me."  
 _The disguise was a type of genjutsu, but could this transformation of materials be another, or is it an advanced type of substitution? Either way, the chakra required for its level of sophistication…_ Neji rapidly thought. _The disguise must also have somehow dispersed her chakra over that of the others'. Theirs is lesser now, while hers is significantly higher._

"We can't return empty-handed," said Tenten. "Your grandfather misses you," she tried. "I have your katana from home -"

"You have nothing I want," Hitomi said. "And what are you going to do? Restrain me?"

Neji wasn't sure. It wasn't ideal, of course, to bring the General's granddaughter back incapacitated, but it may be their only option since she seemed to be disinclined to reason.

One of the other retainers stepped forward but was again, motioned back by Hitomi.

 _Civilians, then. She must be their only means of protection - I doubt their swordmanship can fend off shinobi, but we should avoid casualties or injuries,_ he thought. "We will do what we must."

"I'll go," Tenten muttered. "Test her. See what you can see."

"Be careful," Lee said.

Tenten wasted no time in unfurling one of her two smaller scrolls and unleashing a wave of a dozen kunai. While Hitomi capably responded by deflecting all of them away from herself and her group, Tenten had retrieved a sword of her own. Neji was worried by the smirk this elicited from Hitomi. The two kunoichi began striking at one another with precise arcs, parries, and slips of the blades - each time they met Hitomi's katana would release a shower of sparks and embers that danced over the ground. The flames etching Hitomi's katana seemed to actively reach for Tenten, who expertly kept out of the way of them and the white-hot edge from which they sprung.

 _Chakra's flowing into the blade - typical of samurai from the Land of Iron - but she's still managing to transform metal to fire,_ Neji observed. _Metal that came from wood that became earth. But it doesn't seem to be a particular elemental Style - it's not being performed with the typical elemental flow, nor is it anything beyond simply an object._ Without taking his eyes from them, he turned his head and said, "Lee."

"Got it."

Lee sank into a fighting stance and waited. Tenten noticed and began to work her strikes to turn Hitomi's back to them. Only when this was successful did Lee launch a kick at her; she surprised them by halting Tenten's strike with the tsuba of her katana - which after a burning moment made Tenten withdraw - and lash out a hand at Lee. Her palm connected with his foot and stopped him abruptly in mid-air. A moment more and, without gripping him, she gritted her teeth and pushed her hand downward, making Lee crash to the grass. He attempted to recovery but his leg was, somehow, not cooperating, as if tethered to the ground.

"Lee," Neji prompted.

"It's like an incredible weight is around my ankle," he said, half-appraisingly and half in frustration.

Neji frowned and looked at Hitomi. She seemed out of breath and in the pause that followed, stood straight. She glanced at the three of them and said, "Enough of this." She staked her katana in the ground and brought her hands into a sign. He couldn't make out her whisper.

Neji had just enough time to see the ground below the three of them flash - and feel lightning strike up through his feet - before he felt suddenly deprived of air. A minute in, and his vision was swimming and he couldn't move. In front of them, Hitomi was shaking where she stood but still holding her hand sign, waiting. Two minutes more - Tenten had collapsed. He cursed. One more - he and Lee followed her into darkness. 

* * *

Only when their assailants were collapsed unmoving on the ground did Hitomi drop to her knees and release her hand sign. She reached out and rested a finger on the makeshift katana beside her; it extinguished, then reformed back into a stick. She took in the leftover chakra like a long drink of water.

"Are you all right?" Rin asked and came to her side.

"Let that go on longer than I should have," she replied. A moment more and she stood with the other young woman's help.

"What should we do with them?" Gorou asked. "How long will they be unconscious?" He stood over the one that had tried to kick her and rubbed the back of his neck under his loose ponytail.

"A few hours, perhaps," she said. They returned to the fire and she sat down, raising a hand for their six companion moths to float down and rest on her fingers and knuckles. They glowed faintly, and she felt a small amount of chakra flow from them to her as they jostled for space; she smiled. "Thank you, but there's no need. Keep it for yourselves," she whispered to them. The flow stopped, and the glow abated.

Hitomi looked over at the three shinobi. She was a little surprised that her gamble had paid off and that her grandfather had responded to the rumors in just enough time, and with Leaf shinobi no less. The group began to relax, and she sat down. Hibiki stoked the fire.

She remembered Gorou's question. "We will still part ways come morning," she said. "There's no changing that."

After a moment, Akiko prompted, "And you?"

"No changing my course, either," she said. "These three will be out long enough for all of you to have a head start. If they were truly sent for me, then their mission will need to align with my own if they wish to be successful." She sighed. "I'll take this watch. You should get some sleep."

They settled back down, but reluctantly. Hitomi had wanted her last night with this group to be uneventful if not enjoyable. They'd grown fond of one another despite themselves - what had initially begun as safety in numbers had over the last two years or so become trust and then friendship of a sort. In order to disguise herself she'd needed volunteers, and it hadn't been hard to find others who needed the same thing. In exchange for their companionship and her anonymity, she had enabled them to hide as well. She glanced around at them - Gorou and Hibiki were wanted for robbery and theft, Akiko had run away from an abusive marriage, Yua was in debt, and Rin had helped her mother with killing herself to end the pain of a terminal illness and been accused of murder by her village. There was now enough time and distance between their pursuers and themselves to potentially start their lives anew; just in time for her to make her final preparations for the Shining Week.

 _Grandfather has unwittingly sent me bodyguards,_ she thought and smiled weakly to herself. She indulged in thinking of home for a moment or two - the prospect of returning when her mission was over. But things weren't so simple. Her gaze alighted on the apparent leader of the Leaf trio. _You being here might make things even less simple._


	5. Compromises

**Chapter 5: Compromises**

When Neji awoke dawn was barely making it through the trees. His body was stiff and cold, and the travelers had made no effort to move him or Lee and Tenten into a more comfortable position. Several muscles tingled from what he guessed had been some sort of lightning attack hours ago. His two companions weren't stirring yet. He kept as still as he could and gently turned his head to look at the campsite.

All of the travelers were gone apart from, to his surprise, Hitomi. She was skinning a rabbit by the fire, though there was evidence that other breakfast had already been had, and another was sizzling on a spit. Her haori was draped on the fallen fir and her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows, but otherwise she looked the same - disguised intentionally as a man no doubt, what with her hair braided up and likely bound chest; a slender build of average height, movements economical, posture refined, nothing remarkable about her except for the eyes, now downcast, that had been so fierce the night before.

Neji's foggy brain was just beginning to explore options when she said, "You're awake. Good." He rose into a crouch. "I've no intention of harming you. I'm sorry for last night but it wasn't just me I had to look after." She rid the rabbit of its pelt with a quick jerk. Almost as an afterthought she removed its head.

"Your companions," he said. "Who were they?"

"It's not important and you know it," she said and prepared a second spit. "What _is_ important is that you fulfil your mission. Unfortunately for you I also have a mission, and I can't go home until it's complete."

Tenten began to stir, and then Lee. When they gritted their teeth and went on the defense, Neji raised a hand to stay them.

Hitomi seemed unperturbed. "I was just telling your friend here that I'm sorry for last night. You must be hungry." She stuck her knife in the rabbit already cooking, twisted it and, when the juices ran clear into the flames with a hiss, she took the spit off its brace and replaced it with the second rabbit.

"The jutsu you used on me last night," Lee immediately asked, "What was it?" Neji rolled his eyes at the impressed tone of his voice.

"A lady must have some secrets," she said without looking at them. "Come eat."

Lee moved forward happily to sit by the fire, "Yes, I suppose you're right in that one must not reveal one's skills."

Neji shared a glance with Tenten, who had not moved. Reluctantly, he nodded that they should join, and the two of them sat rigidly opposite Hitomi. The spitted rabbit was passed around. It was rather plain-tasting, of course, but it was cooked well and admittedly welcome.

"I don't have much by way of water, I'm afraid; that'll be our next stop," Hitomi said.

Bearing her earlier words in mind, Neji said, "You said you can't return home until your mission is complete. Unfortunately we cannot allow detours; we're under orders to return you to your grandfather as soon as possible."

"You make me sound like a lost glove," she said.

When she did not immediately elaborate, there was an awkward silence. Eventually Tenten broke it by asking, "If you aren't resisting us now, and didn't take the chance to escape, that means you want us to accompany you, right?"

"Correct." Hitomi turned the second rabbit, prompting a new sizzle of fat. "You've not much of a choice. This is, in fact, the quickest way for your mission to be completed. Otherwise I will disappear and you certainly will not find me for another two years or more."

"We're not in the habit of bartering with our targets," Neji said.

This prompted a sharp glance in his direction, "I'm suggesting an exception rather than a habit."

He couldn't help himself. "You're suggesting a lack of discipline."

She faced him head on, then, frowning, "I'm suggesting a compromise. Or is that not taught to shinobi?"

There was another awkward pause that again Tenten broke. "We can't make promises that go against our client's wishes. What is your mission and how long will it take?"

Hitomi regarded Neji a moment more and then went back to turning the rabbit. "I'm travelling to the Land of Waterfalls, so at least that's in the direction you wanted to take me in, right?"

"And what's there?" Neji asked lowly. He refused the rest of the first rabbit from Lee, who ate it gratefully.

"The Takara Glade, in the south of the province - so close to your home, too," she said. "I must be there in no less than four days to rendezvous with my mentor. Thereafter is a single week of opportunity for me to defend my mentor's colony from what we anticipate to be an attack from henchmen of Orochimaru. Depending on how things go, I can then return home."

"You just want us to follow you that whole time?" Tenten asked.

"Highly unlikely that you'd be able to be that passive, wouldn't you agree?" Hitomi said. "Not if Orochimaru is involved in any way."

"If true then that's further evidence that we cannot make this decision," countered Neji. "This is beyond the original scope of our mission."

Hitomi regarded him coolly over the fire. "Then I suppose you have a choice. Either you return empty-handed to my grandfather, or you come with me." In the silence that followed she checked the second rabbit, squinted to herself, and continued turning it.

 _Judging by her expression, it doesn't matter which option we choose,_ Neji noted. _But we haven't been given leave for any sort of confrontation, much less one with any ally of Orochimaru. Not to mention I doubt General Mifune would look kindly on the idea. And yet...neither would he likely look kindly on us leaving her alone._

"You said 'colony'... What exactly is in the Takara Glade?" Lee asked in between licking his fingers.

She hesitated before answering. "The Takara silk moths." She did not elaborate, which frustrated Neji. "Here's a further compromise. About a day from here is a village where you can send word to your Hokage or my grandfather or both. There is no time to wait there for a response, but you can keep your superiors informed at least. That's the best I can offer you."

Neji closed his eyes for a moment to keep the frustration under control. "The three of us will discuss it," he said and rose, and began to walk out of the campsite back to the road. He heard Tenten and Lee follow him.

"She sounds very much like a General's daughter," said Lee.

Tenten hushed him. "She'll hear."

"I didn't say anything rude!"

"We need to focus," Neji said, "and determine our best course of action."

"It's obvious, isn't it?" said Tenten as they jumped down from the embankment onto the dirt path. "She wouldn't have provided a second compromise if she preferred to go alone."

Neji found it odd that he hadn't considered this. He'd been more preoccupied with trying to piece together what the General had said about Hitomi's affinity for a senjutsu, and her admitting that her mentor had something to do with a colony of moths in the Takara glade - that if somehow exploring her potential reasoning for leaving in the first place outweighed the err in protocol.

"It will be difficult to justify our involvement if Orochimaru is a concern," Neji said, but admitted, "yet it will be even more difficult to justify our lack of involvement if so."

"Then she's right, and the best we can do is send word," said Lee.

Neji frowned deeply. "If it's true and an attack on this colony - whatever it is, exactly - is imminent, and her grandfather said she developed an affinity for senjutsu, that means that the Takara silk moths are where she learned her skills - which means that Orochimaru would attack it in order to either wipe it out or take a jutsu from it. We don't know if Orochimaru himself may make an appearance. This is very serious."

The three of them considered this for a few moments. Lee began pacing. Two squirrels scampered overhead, dislodging needles that Tenten irritably swiped off her shoulders.

Neji watched them, pushing down a rare feeling of nervousness for the safety of his teammates. "You understand, don't you?" he asked.

They looked at him in surprise; Lee stopped pacing and said, clenching a fist, "Of course! We must not give up in the face of danger!"

Neji shook his head slightly. "No, no that's not quite what I mean. You're both still Chunin, and I don't even know, as a Jonin, if this risk is worth it. And we don't know how skilled Miss Hitomi is, or the exact nature of the senjutsu or the capabilities of the moths. We could be up to our necks in trouble before help has a chance to arrive, if Lady Hokage even has anyone to send. If we go now, we might be instigating something much larger."

Tenten raised an eyebrow and folded her arms, smirking. "Don't tell me you're actually worried about us?"

Neji rolled his eyes and looked away.

"Think of this another way," Tenten continued, "I don't know about you, but I've only heard of two places where senjutsu is taught - Ryuchi Cave and Mount Myoboku - and that's by snakes and frogs. There has to be a reason why we haven't heard of this one. So that's one reason we should pay particular attention to Miss Hitomi, but the other is even more important," she held up a finger. "Not only does the General want us retrieving her to be done as discreetly as possible, but he was adamant that she come back ASAP. Which means he needs her back before something happens." When she didn't seem to get the response she wanted, Tenten sighed. "Come on, we're not stupid. You've both seen the way things are going. Tensions are running high and missions are getting stranger and higher-stakes. Why would this one be any different? It's not a lie to say everyone's posturing for war and it's not unreasonable to think a grandfather would want his granddaughter back before it all kicks off."

"You're right," Lee admitted sadly.

Neji turned his back to them, as he was wont to do when he needed to be objective - though he claimed it was so they didn't distract him. He traced the edge of the road until it curved out of sight in the dappled colors of gray and brown bark, deep green, and buttery morning sunshine. _If things get to be too much, we can always forcibly retreat,_ he thought, though it was a half-hearted hope. He needed more information before he could feel confident in such a Plan B.

"Have you made up your mind?"

Neji turned; Hitomi was emerging from the undergrowth with a pack in one hand and the cooked second rabbit - still on its spit - in the other. She paused on the embankment and somehow still managed to look as poised as a warrior ready for battle. The smallest of smiles was on her lips and he resented it. He knew that she had known all along what they were going to decide. It was never much of a choice to begin with and oh how he hated it.

"We'll go with you," he said, swallowing the resentment and remembering that this was a client, "and send word to both our Hokage and your grandfather in this town you speak of."

She jumped down from the embankment. "That's great news. Shall we go?"

"Your fire is out already?" Lee asked and tried to look through the trees.

"Gone without a trace," Hitomi said.

This reminded Neji of another important point. "Before we go anywhere, though - evidently you trust us to accompany you, but considering that jutsu last night, I'm sure you can understand we have our doubts about you. If we're to work together then trust needs to go both ways."

Hitomi seemed to think about his words for a moment or two before lifting her chin with a, "All right. So?"

"There'll be things we need to know in order to best look out for you," Tenten rephrased. "We'll be asking questions. Don't misunderstand - we know that you're a senjutsu practitioner and so you're obliged to protect your teachers, but whatever you can tell us will be appreciated." She crouched and fished out one of her smaller scrolls. "Before all that, it's best I give this back to you."

She unfurled it on the ground but before her palm could make contact with the paper, Hitomi said, "No need. I said there was nothing you have that I want. Also, that will identify me too easily, and until four days from now I am not in the best position for that, particularly now that I cannot disguise myself as thoroughly as I did before."

Tenten frowned, but rolled the scroll back up and stowed it away.

Hitomi essentially pushed the staked rabbit into Lee's hands. A small pale brown moth Neji hadn't previously noticed fluttered onto Hitomi's cheek and crawled down her jaw and back of her neck out of sight. "We should get moving," she said and turned away.


	6. Crossing the Border

**Chapter 6: Crossing the Border**

Tsunade broke the seal on the small message scroll and unfurled it while Shizune saw the Courier out. She distantly heard the door click close as she scanned through what was written.

"It's from Guy's team. Good news it -" she cut herself short and read part of it a second time. "Hmm, perhaps not."

"Lady Tsunade?" Shizune said and came back to the desk.

Once she'd read it a couple of times, she handed the message over and sat back in her chair to think it over. While she understood the difficult decision Team Guy had had to make, their choice to let the client do whatever she wanted did not put Tsunade at ease. The true client - General Mifune - was going to be less than pleased. No doubt he was receiving the news at this very moment.

"The General's granddaughter is doing what?" Shizune said under her breath. "I didn't even know he had a granddaughter much less that she was missing." She placed the scroll back on the desk when she was done. "I...I thought senjutsu was only taught at Mount Myoboku and Ryuchi Cave?"

Tsunade stood and placed her hands behind her back as she stared out of her broad window. The village was mottled with sunshine and cloud-shadows that moved swiftly overhead in the mild breeze. "There was once a rumor concerning powerful moths that only emerged from dormancy every one hundred years - they've been presumed extinct for some generations now due to the fragility of their ecosystem and their vulnerability while sleeping. Apparently we were all fooled, and there's been some survivors in the Takara Glade. They're highly sought-after."

"And Lady Hitomi?"

Tsunade tried to recall what little she could from her history books. "If I remember correctly...while the rest of the colony sleeps, there's one matriarch whose job it is to seek out senjutsu apostles to recruit and command to protect the colony. There haven't been any in, like I said, generations. Hitomi may be the first in who knows how long, and maybe the last as well. Who knows how she was found." She turned around and leaned on the windowsill, folding her arms, "Our bigger concern, though, is the likelihood of an attack by Orochimaru."

Shizune's brow furrowed. "Is it so likely?" She picked up TonTon and held him close.

"The colony's only awake and active for a single week, and if that week begins four days from now it's a prime time to attempt to either capture or snuff out the last of it," Tsunade said. "They specialize in transforming and weaving nature chakra - primarily for advanced substitution and camouflage. To discover the secrets of that jutsu would be a prized asset for anyone. It could even turn the tide of the war before it even begins."

It was Shizune's turn to think. She glanced around the desk, the floor. "There's no one available that we can send. Everyone's out right now."

Tsunade hummed an agreement. "And the Land of Iron wouldn't risk sending anyone across borders, even for her, or they would have done so to begin with. Go through the recent dispatches and see who is scheduled to return before the four-day mark, or if anyone can be safely recalled or diverted."

"Yes ma'am."

"What is that girl thinking," Tsunade muttered. "This is hardly the time or place to be opening oneself up for attack." Moreover, she knew she had to consult with Katsuya soon in order to determine how much about the moths was mere rumor and what was true.

There was also the nagging sensation that all of this could be some elaborate trap for one of her best teams, regardless of whether Hitomi was the grandchild of a trusted client. After all, Team Guy had said nothing regarding her reasons for leaving in the first place and Tsunade had never met the girl herself - would it truly be General Mifune's granddaughter that they'd be bringing back? What if her motives were less than savory? She'd become a Rogue, after all, and children of wise leaders tended to rebel. What if she'd been misguided or brainwashed these past two years? How far would a nearly-extinct colony go to restore themselves?

 _There's nothing to do but trust the team's judgment,_ she thought, _and send who we can when we can._

* * *

Throughout the day Hitomi had artfully evaded most of the trio's questions; an art she had perfected in childhood. She had hoped that allowing them to send word to her grandfather and their Hokage would satisfy them, at least for a little while, but she seemed to be stuck with at least two of the most stubbornly inquisitive shinobi she'd ever encountered.

The keen taijutsu specialist, Lee, was the easiest to satisfy. Although not a fool by any means, he was easily-diverted - mostly of his own doing. Hitomi had been intrigued to discover that he had very little chakra to speak of but was not lulled into a sense of security because of it. His pestering was mostly about her abilities, and he seemed to have forgotten the night before judging by the amount of appreciation he held for what little she revealed.

The kunoichi around her age, Tenten, was focused on asking more personal questions, no doubt in an effort to form a more accurate picture of Hitomi as a person and thus shed light on her motives. She covered this fairly adequately with small talk about weapons - which Hitomi guessed must be the most common ground between them if she took into consideration the weapons-summoning last night - and volunteering select information about themselves and the Leaf in general.

The leader, Neji, was the quietest. He had a sour expression intensified by the telltale Hyuga eyes and Hitomi hazarded a guess that he was likely a Jonin. He let his two companions do most of the quizzing, which led her to believe that his role was mostly evaluation and analyzing the larger picture. No doubt he found the lack of specific information frustrating - something she herself could appreciate - but he said nothing to that end.

They came to a blue-painted bridge crossing an overgrown ravine that pronounced the Grass/Waterfall border; the canopy opened up and Hitomi was relieved to see the sky. The sun was setting and the sky was streaked with plum and salmon. The air was growing cold. It wasn't worth her breath to object when Neji held out a hand and took a couple of steps ahead of them, activating his Byakugan to inspect the exposed area.

Hitomi tipped up her sugegasa to adjust the wide headband around her hairline, waiting. "There's nothing," she said.

After a moment, Neji turned to them. He did not admit that she was right, but continued ahead. "We'll make camp shortly."

"Shame there's not a village around…" Tenten said.

"By tomorrow night there will be," said Hitomi and tugged her sugegasa back down.

Lee, noticing, asked, "If there's no one around, why bother hiding your face? It's getting dark, too."

"Habit," she said. Their shoes made the planks of the bridge creak.

"How far is the glade?" Tenten asked next.

"Day after tomorrow we should be there," Hitomi replied and attempted a smile. Really, she was eager to be there far sooner but felt the need to present a picture of composure to the other three.

They waited until they were a decent distance away from the bridge before diverting off the road into the shadows of the woods. Hitomi took the lead again and led them to the ruins of an old house that she had used before as shelter; she liked it not only as a distance-marker, but also because miraculously the kamidana was still intact despite the rest of the house being in a dilapidated state. She took this as an auspicious sign.

Twilight fell. The central hearth was free of enough debris to be used safely, and Hitomi removed her sugegasa and placed it to one side before collecting any wood handy, wet or not, and placing it in the hearth. Holding her hands just above the pile, she exerted a small amount of chakra quickly into the air and with a pop, flames curled under her palms. She rested them there over the wood for a moment and then gently lowered a finger to touch the wood; the dampness began to sizzle away into steam, then heated air, then flame of its own. A moment more and her chakra retreated, and she sat back on her haunches.

The trio were eyeing her work. She supposed divulging a little would keep the wolves away, and the closer she grew to the glade - and to the Shining Week - the less consequence there was to revealing her talents. "It's advanced substitution jutsu," she said. Rising to her feet, she began to clear more debris out of the way so they would have room to rest. Lee helped her.

"You substitute elements," Tenten said.

"In a way, in order to facilitate one object transforming into another. Some transformations are easier than others - object complexity, passivity, and elemental kinship play a part in the permanence," Hitomi said.

"You don't appear to follow the traditional elemental flow," Neji prompted, "or have a particular Style."

Hitomi took a breath and answered, "Because I've learnt to bypass it when needed."

"You're a Jonin, then," he said.

She shrugged. "If that's the condition for it, sure. Naturally I never took the exams. And anyway, samurai chakra doesn't typically fall into elemental Styles like traditional shinobi so I suppose I already had an advantage, there."

After a moment's consideration, Neji continued, "That explains the katana and, perhaps, the lightning you incapacitated us with, and the fire just now, but not what you did to Lee."

Hitomi was surprised he hadn't figured it out - or maybe he had, and wanted her to admit to it. She sat down with her pack between her feet and opened it, looking for her rations. She debated whether to answer him, as there was the possibility that it could still be a trick up her sleeve. But, she supposed, trust went both ways - she had to sleep at some point. "That was a change in force," she said without looking at them.

"You can do that?" Tenten said breathily.

"I see!" said Lee. "You took the force of my forward motion and converted it to gravity!"

"I did, yes," Hitomi admitted. She did not, however, want to venture that transformation of force was a technique she was only beginning to master fairly recently, and that it was by far the weaker aspect of her repertoire. She glanced up to see Neji frowning at her again. "Something wrong?"

"Who taught you?" he asked. "You couldn't have just walked into a colony of summoning creatures and apprenticed yourself straight away. You would have had to have some kind of training beforehand to even demonstrate an affinity for any kind of jutsu."

"You'll meet her soon enough," Hitomi said. A chill ran over the back of her neck as she unwillingly recalled the first few times she'd tried ninjutsu of any kind; as she unwillingly recalled her parents and by association, the day they'd died.

Unexpectedly, Neji didn't press or seem as bothered by her lack of elaboration this time. "Lee, your turn for first watch," he said instead, and he and Tenten began to bed down.

Hitomi was surprised at their level of discipline - though she supposed she shouldn't have been; they were shinobi after all - sleep on command, be content to go without eating, adapt to the situation. It reminded her of the things she'd learnt while hanging on to her grandfather's robes and reluctantly from her parents, and her stomach felt a twinge of homesickness. Foregoing the ration she was going to eat, she went to the kamidana on the other side of the house. It was covered in lichen by this point owing to the fallen-in roof, and empty of deities, but she knelt before it nonetheless - not so much praying as thinking intently to the point of 'thinking herself out' until her mind was blank and calm. The anxiety that'd been prodded awake in her heart began to subside.

 _Remember your plan,_ she thought. _Day after tomorrow you will become a lure; the day after that you will become a beacon._


	7. The Salt Collector

**Chapter 7: The Salt Collector**

 _(The next night)_

Suguri village was around the same size as Yatsu; Hitomi had led them to it the following evening and as they passed through the two lanternposts that marked the village gate, they also passed through the long shadows of them cast by the setting sun. An old woman was instructing a young child in dutifully lighting them for the night. Like Yatsu, it was situated beside a river that glimmered like a snake's back and was just about visible through the many willows anchored along its banks. On the other side was an eroded cliff face with shrubby colonizing much of it, mirrored by another wall of earth on the left of the village; indeed Suguri seemed to be backed into a corner, while the river emerged from a narrow gorge at the very back.

Neji and Lee tailed behind Tenten and Hitomi, who were talking rather jovially about the latter's accumulation of superstitions. Neji had been surprised that the atmosphere between the three of them and their charge had improved over the course of the day - while there had not been any large revelations since the night before, Hitomi otherwise seemed to be making a genuine effort to share what she could and make small talk, which led him to wonder about the source of her cageyness from before. She had mentioned that Suguri was the village closest to the Glade and that it was their last stop before arriving, so perhaps she was simply in a better mood this close to her goal.

"You've been here before, right?" Tenten asked Hitomi as a child pointed her way from a doorway.

"No," she replied and removed her sugegasa. "I've typically taken different routes each time to avoid being predictable, should anyone have seen past the group camouflage and be following me." She looked around them at the tidy homes and ample greenery, the lanterns hanging from the trees, "But considering this is a homecoming of sorts, I thought it would be nice to spend the night in a bed for a change. Yua said they have great steamed dumplings here, too."

They did not need to walk far into the village to hear the sound of a monk chanting, and smell incense. A little further down the single main street, headed toward the back of the village, and they were faced with the back of a modest funeral. From what Neji could tell, the casket was being carried to an open cart playing the role of a hearse, and soon the crowd parted to let it pass back their way. They too stood aside, and before giving them a chance Hitomi quietly instructed them to hide their thumbs in their palms as the hearse passed. Only once it had turned down a side street - presumably to a more open area to be cremated - did they move on.

Hitomi paused at a fork in the road; one route led to a parting in the willows that revealed a small pier over the river's wide bend, while the other was a dead end in a cluster of homes and shops where the remains of the funeral were being packed away. She made a small noise to herself and headed for this courtyard-like patch of road, which seemed to often be used as the town square of sorts. At the opposite end was an incredibly small inn with an old dog sleeping on the veranda. Steam gently rose from behind it.

"Oh! Is there a hot spring here?" Tenten asked, noticing it too.

"A small one," Hitomi said. "Consider it a thank you."

Neji squinted, finding this a little _too_ nice. He was uncertain how to voice it, and the enthusiasm of his teammates dragged him reluctantly onward.

"I should be thankful, too - you've made this easy."

The four of them turned - Hitomi with less alarm, Neji noticed - to see a middle-aged bald man dressed completely in white standing with his arms folded. He was tall and athletically-built, and his chakra was tinged with malice. There was no identifying village headband that Neji could see, but what he _could_ see were two silver grass sickles with clear crystal hilts on either hip. The middle of the man's face, neck and what little chest was visible was discolored with a large reddish burn scar, as though from a blast, making it difficult to focus on much else.

"You are?" Hitomi asked and stepped in front of them. While this annoyed him, Neji wasn't about to make a fool of them both and step in front of her in turn.

The man made a slight bow. "Takahashi Arata. A pleasure." He stood upright, and his voice was calm and oddly respectful as he said, "Though I was not expecting you to have acquired skilled companions, you will nonetheless make a fine addition to mine and my benefactor's collections, Lady Hitomi." His smile was almost benevolent.

Beside Neji, Tenten and Lee were put further on edge.

"At least you've made your intentions clear," Hitomi said evenly.

"I admire transparency."

"Who's this benefactor you speak of?" Neji asked next.

"Orochimaru," Hitomi answered, and Arata did not correct her. She tossed her pack to one side of the street and took note of a few civilian bystanders. "Let's at least take this away from the village. They've no part -"

Arata rushed them; Tenten blocked a strike to Hitomi from one of the sickles with her short knife, and luckily Hitomi did not need further instruction to move. Neji felt a surge of chakra and saw pale crystals grow on Tenten's knife, and she dropped it before they progressed to her hand. She and Hitomi dodged another swipe, and Neji and Lee began their own paired assault. Arata was very agile, but soon seemed to realize his speed was not up to par with Lee's and proceeded to put distance between them. Villagers scattered as he leapt away, and he threw one of his sickles into the soft ground between the four of them, then reached into a small pouch on his belt. Neji braced himself for kunai or shuriken, but instead saw only a faint scattering of grit.

 _Sand?_ he wondered.

When Arata landed he struck his second sickle into the ground at his feet, a line of chakra shot over the ground directly to its twin, followed by thinner lines to the fallen grains. Not a second later and these lines had formed squares that exploded from the earth as solid, glassy walls that separated and imprisoned the four of them. Neji experimented with a palm strike and saw Lee do the same with a kick, but to no avail. The cubes were open to the bare earth but little more than four feet square, not leaving much room to maneuver. The air inside them grew humid. He heard Tenten grunting as she struck repeatedly at her cube with a hand axe.

 _They were grains of glass, then? No…_ He tried to recall what it was he was smelling. It was strangely briney and stung his nostrils, like he was at the sea. He reached out a hand and scratched the surface with a fingernail, tasted it. _It's salt._

No sooner had he identified it than Neji began to feel thirsty. Although the salt was infused with chakra, it did not drain it from elsewhere and yet he was beginning to feel...dry. Sapped. His fingertips were beginning to pucker.

"More of a challenge, please, Lady Hitomi," Arata called as though to a student.

Neji looked for her - the several salt walls between them and the weakening sunset made it difficult, so he activated the Byakugan. He saw Tenten first - who was making some luck in putting chips and scratches in the chakra-infused salt - behind him and to the right, and then Hitomi next to her on the other side of the wall she was trying to get through.

He turned as Arata appeared beside his shoulder. "The Hyuga Byakugan would also be a fine addition," he said. "I'll be back for you later." He walked through the cubes toward Hitomi.

Tenten had succeeded in chopping a hole through the shared wall between her and Hitomi, but it was not large enough to be useful. It was encouraging, at least, that it was not resealing itself. She was hacking more furiously as Arata approached them.

 _Our strikes wouldn't work, but a blade does,_ Neji noted. _And in order to create this much salt, it's either a type of Crystal Style, or its own unique kekkei genkai._

Hitomi was crouched with both palms flat on the ground. It was only by virtue of the Byakugan that Neji could see what was happening - spread over the entire street to encompass their prisons and their prisoner was a pond of Hitomi's chakra that proceeded to soften the earth, turn it into silt and then muddy water underneath them. She wasted no time in slipping out underneath her cube's wall, and the three of them rapidly followed her example. They resurfaced into the waist-high water and stepped onto its surface.

Arata was waiting. "Much better." His salt, Neji noticed, was slow to dissolve - in fact it seemed barely affected by the water. "But now you've created a new problem."

The water practically exploded with senbon, piercing the soles of their feet and whatever else they could reach, and tearing into the buildings and bystanders that had rushed back from the cremation. It was a different kind of sting, and Neji confirmed that the senbon too were made of salt. They were more brittle than the cubes and broke easily, but that did indeed present its own, new problem - not only did they sting, but as he had experienced in the cube, the air was damp and briney again and his body was drying out and weakening at a steady rate.

"Tenten, Lee, let's finish this quickly!" he ordered as he broke off another senbon from his heel. "Miss Hitomi, stay back."

Arata darted to retrieve the first of his two sickles; Tenten shadowed him with a volley of shuriken and attempted to redirect him away from the buildings, but to little avail. He headed for the second sickle behind Hitomi and Tenten rushed to her side. Lee landed a kick cleanly in the middle of his back, wincing as it drove a senbon deeper, and Arata softened his landing on one hand on the rippling water. He rolled to one side on his back, swiping with the sickle and leaping to his feet.

He tried to put distance between them again by leaping on the overhang of a roof, but Neji was there. "Eight Trigrams: Thirty-Two Palms." He struck once, twice, repositioned as Arata did, struck a third time, a fourth. He could feel his kidneys aching and his body tiring as he continued the assault. Roof tiles dislodged underfoot. By the thirty-secondth strike Neji's view of the trigrams was practically nonexistent and both he and Arata were on one knee, breathing heavily.

"Did you know," Arata said, "that the salt in everyone's bodies is different?"

Neji wasn't so sure that was correct - not that he was a scientist - but was more interested in where this one-sided conversation might be going.

"And yet ultimately, salt is salt, and it all responds to me." Arata raised his hands - one in Neji's direction and the other toward the rapidly-approaching Lee - and made a grasping motion. Neji gritted his teeth as suddenly it felt like his blood and organs were shifting, being pulled toward his opponent; through the one eye he managed to keep open he saw Lee stopped in midair by presumably the same sensation, and he only just managed to grab hold of the edge of the roof before he could fall back to the ground. Neji looked down to see blood beginning to form miniscule beads on his exposed, muddied skin that shivered and attempted to take flight.

Tenten and Hitomi leapt onto the roof, the former wielding a naginata and the latter her katana retrieved from its scroll. Tenten thrust the naginata's blade into Arata, who froze. The pulling sensation in Neji's body stopped. He was shocked when Hitomi ran forward and without blinking an eye, decapitated the older man - they were dismayed, however, when the body lost color and softness and began to crumble into salt that sluiced down the roof. The head broke apart into chunks of it on impact and rained down into the darkness.

"A salt clone!" Lee said as he got onto the roof, too.

The four of them looked around the immediate area. Arata's jutsu was dissolving into the shallow pond of Hitomi's creation, and Neji could not detect any other matching chakra.

"The salt will poison the soil and the river," Hitomi said, mostly to herself, and sheathed her katana before jumping down again. The trio followed her. Hitomi placed a hand on the water and transformed it back into earth within a few moments. The act, however, seemed to tire her even further, and it took her a moment to catch her breath and stand. "This will need to be dug up and replaced. All this...all this was earlier than I expected."

Her attention was quickly taken by the townspeople, who were creeping out of their battered homes and down the street supporting one another, the able-bodied ones carrying lanterns. Children were crying and the old dog that'd been on the inn's steps was whimpering. An old woman with a spilt water bucket was collapsed on the river's side of the street with a younger woman trying to support her. A few of the younger men were looking in the shinobi's direction angrily.

Hitomi hesitated, and put her hand on the hilt of her katana. She said, "My name is Mifune Hitomi, granddaughter of General Mifune of the Land of Iron. I brought this upon your village. For that I am deeply sorry. You're right to direct your anger at me, and I don't expect you to care who I am - but please know that I am the person who will avenge what was done here. I swear on my life." Hitomi got down on both knees and prostrated herself before the gathering small crowd in the mud and lanternlight.


	8. Cranes Against Boughs of Cedar

**Chapter 8: Cranes Against Boughs of Cedar**

From the inn's veranda Neji listened to the crickets chirp as he watched Hitomi talk to a few of the villagers across the street. He took frequent sips from the pitcher of water each of them had been given to steadily rehydrate and flush the salt from their systems; he kept having to gently shoo away the dog that attempted to lick his free palm.

"The baths are ready," said the innkeeper's son behind him.

Neji glanced over his shoulder at Tenten and Lee sitting on the floor. "You two go ahead. I need to talk to Miss Hitomi."

They looked at him curiously. Lee wiped his chin and Tenten rose. "Be nice, okay?" she said and made her way into the shadows of the building. Lee shortly followed.

Neji returned his gaze to the dim shape of Hitomi, who was now bowing deeply to the villagers as they turned away and dispersed. Eventually she brought herself upright and slowly walked back toward the inn. She looked more tired than he thought a Sage would look, but inquiring as to why was not a priority at present. She paused, surprised, when she saw him waiting, and then carried on past him to claim her own water pitcher and drink deeply.

"You said that this was earlier than you expected," he began. He couldn't stop the anger leaking into his voice. "That means you knew this would happen. That you would deliberately let yourself be recognized when you reached this village."

She finished her sip, paused, and without looking at him said, "Yes."

"You should have told us - this could have been much more serious or the damage and danger could have been avoided altogether."

"It was a calculated risk," she said.

"It was irresponsible!" Neji snapped. "Why would you do such a thing?"

"If I didn't make my presence known then there was a chance that Orochimaru's attack on the colony would not come during my peak strength," she explained.

"Well it came anyway, didn't it? It came early," he pointed out.

"That wasn't a full-strength attack and you know it. It was a test."

He didn't want to give her the satisfaction of admitting she was right. "You may have learned the skills of a kunoichi but it means very little without experience. You have no practical understanding of the ethics involved, nor how to figure in those around you." He thought back to the rooftop. "And you decapitated the enemy without hesitation - you weren't even going to question him."

"There are no questions to ask," she countered. "I know what I have to do and interrogation isn't on that list."

"That's yet another example of how you think you exist in a vacuum. _You_ may not have anything to learn from the enemy, but the rest of the shinobi world values any and all information that can gleaned about Orochimaru. You have no idea." Neji frowned deeply and folded his arms as best he could with the pitcher still in one hand. He looked away from her and thought of their failed attempt to to retrieve Sasuke; the lack of any progress since. Every opportunity not taken felt like sabotage.

When she hadn't spoken for a while Neji looked over at her again; she had been looking at him but now she turned away and drank. Between sips she said, "I'm sorry."

"Your ambiguity is frustrating and counterproductive," he said, and finished off his pitcher.

Instead of commenting on it in the same way as he had not commented on her apology, after a few moments she said, "We should soak and drink as much as possible. The salt senbons will take a while to dissolve from our systems. And in case you were curious, tomorrow morning we'll access the Glade. It's across the river."

Hitomi rose and began to slip off her mud-stiff haori as she left the room. Neji sighed and went to do the same.

* * *

Considering the late hour, after their soak in the hot springs they were provided with cold foods and chose to eat informally in their shared room. When Lee had expressed surprise concerning the hospitality, Hitomi had explained that she had compensated the villagers accordingly and made arrangements for the Takara moths to continue as their benefactors but did not explain how, which frustrated Neji further even if it didn't ultimately matter.

They picked at the rice balls and fruit in silence, continuing to drink plenty and attempt to relax in the yukata they'd been provided while their clothes were washed. The draining nature of the senbons was still present and none of them could accurately determine how long it would be until they felt back at full strength - even Lee claimed he felt somewhat lacklustre, but after a while when Tenten was dozing he had begun handstand pushups to 'sweat out the salt'.

Neji meanwhile had tried to meditate but his thoughts were too intrusive, and laid on his back instead to listen to the night. He didn't realize he too had dozed off until he woke; it was still night and the lamp in the room had burnt out. Lee was asleep at last in one corner. Neji rose amid his teammates' light snoring and realized Hitomi was no longer in the room. He took a couple more gulps of water on a dry mouth and slipped quietly out of the room to look for her.

Thoughts of the enemy returning in their weakened state to kidnap their charge were beginning to stir in Neji's mind. He hurried outside, where a sort of pier encompassed the back of the inn, the hot springs, and the edge of the river. There was little light to see by and the breeze was chilly this late at night. Luckily before he could activate his Byakugan or go very far he heard Hitomi humming to herself; the melody drifted through the willow trees hemming the pier and bowing over the inn and led him onward.

Hitomi was at the farthest end of the pier and nearly indistinguishable against the mountainside as a result. Neji paused by the closest willow's trunk and it took him a moment, but he realized that his eyes weren't tired - she was indeed dancing to her melody, and there were indeed scraps of green-gold chakra following her hands and hovering above her head that could only be moths. He watched and realized that the moths stayed an equal distance between her crown and palms, though it was hard to tell which had control over the other. Her movements - turning slowly on the spot, gentle rises and falls of her body and arms, the rigid spine, the fluid bends and tilts of her hands and neck - reminded him of both a lady's fan dance that he'd seen once as a child and the meditative training done in some Gentle Fist arts, but he could also see some arcs commonly used by swordsmen. She had not noticed him - her eyes were closed and she was smiling. The breeze ran its fingers through her long hair, drying it.

 _Why is she doing this in the middle of the night? We need our strength - she should be resting. Not to mention how exposed this is…_ A minute or two in, though, and he had not moved. Combined with her soothing humming, it was admittedly mesmerizing to watch. _I'll just keep an eye on her here, then. Maybe this is something I shouldn't interrupt. She'll stop eventually,_ he thought and sat cross-legged against the tree, crossing his arms too.

Her voice settled on him like warmth from the sun. His eyes narrowed in what he refused to call contentment and unfocused, watching the moths and her hands like delicate birds blurring with the moonlight on the river behind her.

* * *

Neji cursed when he woke yet again. He was stiff from the uncomfortable position and wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep, but it wasn't yet dawn. Hitomi was asleep on her side on the pier - the moths had vanished.

He stood and used stretching as an excuse to think. _Not nocturnal like a moth, then._ He moved into the middle of the pier, debating what to do. _She keeps distance between us to avoid having to answer questions - that much is obvious. Sleeping out here is ridiculous, though._ He walked quietly to her. On closer inspection there was a large amber-colored moth with four red and black eyes on its wings covering the one eye of hers not buried in her sleeve. It did not move. He debated whether to wake her, even leaned over and stretched out a hand to do so but stopped just short of her shoulder. He sighed.

Crouching instead, he gently picked Hitomi up in both arms. The moth shivered its wings and crawled to her temple. She stirred, mumbling, "Put me down, Noboru," but did not wake - for which he was grateful mostly because it allowed him to avoid getting caught in a rare act of sympathy, rather than for sake of her comfort. He carefully carried her back to the inn and after struggling with a couple of sliding doors, managed to get them both back in the shared room. The moth rode with her and, when he laid her down, crawled back to resettle on her eye cavity.

Neji straightened. _I'll be glad when all this is over._ He settled down against the wall opposite her and prepared to go to sleep properly, breathing deeply to diffuse the irritability. He thought again of Hitomi's melody and her dancing, its familiarity. _Where did I see a dance like that before?_ he tried to recall. Vague images crept up from his memory. A celebration of some kind, perhaps, at the head household. Maybe a wedding. An entertainer in blue. _What was it called?_ As his mind drifted off to sleep he remembered, _Cranes Against Boughs of Cedar._

* * *

 _(The next morning; the Land of Iron)_

Noboru was normally impatient with his tutor, who frequently dozed off during their lessons. This morning, however, he hadn't noticed when it happened until the elderly man's glasses fell off his nose with a clatter. The sound startled them both, but the tutor soon sunk back into slumber - Noboru relinquished his hold on his pen and returned his gaze to the morning sunshine blazing through the courtyard on the untouched snow. A clump of it gently cracked, slid a little, and then fell from the miniature pines.

Suddenly, he remembered Hitomi running to him - back when they were just children with too-big sleeves. It'd been in this very courtyard, in fact. She eagerly showed him the dance she'd been practicing for the past week or two, the one with the four pale fans that she notched together like bird wings - Cranes Against Boughs of Cedar. She had been so proud of herself, so delicate with them. She'd said she was going to learn to do the same with swords to impress her mother and that he had to keep it a secret.

 _Where are you, Hitomi? It's been a week since the shinobi left to find you,_ he thought. _You should be home by now._ He rubbed at his stiff neck, and quietly rose to walk onto the veranda bordering the garden in the hopes that the windchill would give him something else to think about. _What if they don't find you? What if you don't come home? What then?_

"You let him sleep this time, I see."

Noboru turned at his father's voice as he approached, but wasn't sure what to say. His mind felt in a fog.

His father's smile remained. "It's not like you to look so sullen, or to let Master Huko have a break."

Noboru sat on the edge of the veranda cross-legged and poked holes in the shape of a tree in a snow drift. "What happens if Lady Hitomi doesn't return?"

After a moment's pause, his father surprised him by also sitting on the edge next to him. "It's also not like you to worry about Lady Hitomi." He took in a deep breath and Noboru snuck a glance at him to see him scratch at the scar climbing the side of his neck. "We have faith that the Leaf shinobi will see their mission through."

"But if they don't, or can't."

His father hesitated again. "Then should something befall General Mifune, there will be a struggle for power in the Land of Iron," he said carefully. "One of the other two generals will likely take his place." He nudged Noboru with his arm, "At least you'll not have to worry about the engagement, eh?"

His father had never been good at jokes, but this time Noboru didn't have the wherewithal to pretend. "That doesn't make me happy." Saying such a thing aloud made him feel worse, somehow, but unlike his intended he could not find the words to describe it further and this made him feel _even worse_ \- he was reminded of everything he'd done to feel worthy of the role he was to play, at first for duty but lately also for affection. He forced himself to stare at the blindingly white snow.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. At length his father broke it again with an awkward, "Noboru, do you actually...care for your intended, now?" He seemed genuinely perplexed. "Of course the two of you have been playmates since you could walk, but..." he cleared his throat.

"She has always been my friend," Noboru said what was easiest first. He tried to push through the fog in his mind, find the words to explain to the person he trusted most. "Even if she was better than me in most things. I've been trying my best to become smarter, stronger, less clumsy - just so she won't feel like a fool next to me when she comes back and her grandfather tells her what we have to do. I don't want her to be disappointed."

His father tried to laugh, "Our family is hardly a poor match. It is the General's way of honoring us."

The words came out before he could stop himself, "The General is honoring _you_ and _your_ services. Your two older sons are already married so this is easy for him - and it helps him in the long run. But what about us? Me and Hitomi - as people. Her especially. I am not her best match."

"You will never again speak poorly of the General in my presence. Understand?" his father intoned, frowning at him. When he seemed satisfied that his message had gotten across, his face softened, his eyes becoming honey rather than polished bronze. "We did our best for you both, because that is what parents do. More to the point, I wish for my son to see himself in a better light. You are no poor match." He let fall a heavy hand onto Noboru's shoulder, "You are the son of a great captain," he added mock-haughtily, "and a fine horseback archer. You have the energy of ten men - and far more common sense and kindness than your brothers." He ruffled his hair and Noboru swatted him away, but laughed, felt a little better. "Lady Hitomi will need that."

As they settled back into companionable quiet, Noboru glanced over his shoulder at his tutor. His father traced his gaze. "He wasn't talking about anything Hitomi likes," he said by way of explanation.

"Perhaps you should think instead of what can _help_ her, when you are husband and wife, rather than what merely _interests_ her," his father suggested, and rose. He began to walk back into their house. "When you're done, we'll spar."

"Dad?"

His father paused, turned.

"Will you tell me if there's news of her?"

His fathered smiled, nodded, and continued on his way.


	9. Ambush in Graphite

**Chapter 9: Ambush in Graphite**

"Don't take this the wrong way, but," said Tenten, "I wasn't expecting a Sage to be so tired after one battle. Though granted none of us are at one hundred percent after all that salt."

Hitomi looked up from pulling on her socks, tried not to feel ruffled. "Well, it's mostly because I'm not technically a Sage, as you may know it. Outside of the Shining Week - until the colony awakens - my stamina is limited. As Neji pointed out," she added more quietly, "I do not have the experience that the three of you have." Her voice strengthened again as she stood up and unfolded her hakama to step into them, "That's also why I don't use a Summoning outside of that week."

Tenten tied the knots of her blouse and made an intrigued noise. "So if the Takara moths are asleep right now, what about the one that was on your face this morning? And the others when we first met you?"

"Normal moths," Hitomi nodded. "They're not strictly-speaking Takara moths, but since I have an affinity for them I can use them as chakra conduits of sorts to help me channel natural energy outside of the Shining Week." She knotted her belt.

"Why do they call it the Shining Week, anyway?" Tenten ran her fingers through her hair and quickly tied it back up into two buns.

Hitomi hadn't considered this before. "I'm not sure, to be honest with you. I suppose it's more of a metaphor for strength - a single week that's a flash of activity and power. Something like that. The moths only live for one week."

Tenten turned to her, confused. "Only a week? Every hundred years, right? Then how were you trained?"

Hitomi hesitated, then supposed there was little harm in telling her now - the Shining Week was upon them anyhow. It was easier to talk to Tenten, too. "There's one moth that's chosen at the end of the Shining Week by the colony's apostles, called the Kantoku - the Warden - who is given the power to live outside of that week in order to find new apostles and protect the new larvae while they sleep and mature."

Her brow was still furrowed. "So -"

"Tenten! Are you and Miss Hitomi ready yet?!" Lee called through the door, making Tenten sigh. "Neji is getting impatient!"

"He's always impatient!" Tenten called back. "We're coming."

Mention of his name made Hitomi bristle, but she hurried to finish dressing nonetheless. Although not fully certain of who had brought her inside the night before - and she'd felt awkward asking when they all awoke and embarrassed to have fallen asleep out there at all - she had a feeling she knew who it was.

Lee made some half-intelligible enthusing over the virtues of each gender that made Tenten sigh again more wearily. "One day I would like to have a conversation without inter-"

Something impacted the wooden frame of the inn, making it judder. A second later and the room was shot through with pitch-black veins and the building began to moan, splinter, and collapse. Hitomi grabbed her katana and Tenten her scroll, and they bolted into the hall, immediately having to duck as the ceiling suddenly dropped - Lee caught a rafter with both hands and held it, gritting his teeth.

"Go!" he said.

"Outside, outside! The pier!" Tenten grabbed and pushed at Hitomi as they struggled to navigate the collapse. They heard a crash and Lee followed them. More of the black veins flurried underfoot and struck through the walls, making them duck, jump and dodge. When the door to outside wouldn't budge they had to ram through it with their shoulders.

The pier was crackling underfoot like straw; the veins of black were rapidly retreating in the direction of the courtyard in the front of the inn.

"What are they?" Lee asked and lifted his foot as one darted underneath it. A trail of black dust was left in the worm-eaten wood.

"More importantly we need to find Neji," Tenten said. "Lee, stay with Hitomi." She took the opportunity to fasten her scroll to the small of her back before darting around the ruined building.

Hitomi tied her katana to her belt and, noting that her sandals were among those buried irretrievably in the inn, tugged off her socks once more and discarded them. She ran a finger over the black residue and inspected it, rubbing it between her fingers. "It's like soot," she said. When Lee didn't respond, she glanced at him. He was bouncing slightly and anxiously looking at the point where Tenten had disappeared. "We should assist them," she suggested.

This got his attention. "No! This is an enemy attack and they're probably looking for you. We should stay out of sight." He tugged her under the curtains of the willow boughs and up into the tree. From this vantage point they could see over the rubble.

Many of the street's other buildings were collapsed, with gradually-thickening veins of black running through and over the ground from the rubble to the middle of the courtyard where stood a young figure wearing goggles and a respirator, in the company of Arata. The veins were coiling into six unstable-looking, mantis-like creatures the size of mules surrounding the pair and, once fully-formed, sprung forward with lightning speed. Townsfolk screamed, more buildings exploded under their force.

Hitomi watched the way the creatures seemed to spring from one spot to another, shriveling it and leaving it blackened in their wake. It wasn't long before there was a smoky smell in the hot air. Tenten sprang out of nowhere and knocked one with her bo in midair, shattering it. Once it touched the ground, however, it reformed as a series of shifting planes until it was back as a mantis again, and chasing her.

"It's carbon," Hitomi said quietly. "Graphite."

"But the buildings -" Lee began.

"Carbon's in everything - living or inanimate. That kid is leaching the carbon out of the immediate area and turning it into those things," she said. "And Arata's here."

Neji had appeared now, too, running from between two rubble piles to attack the jutsu user; Arata unsurprisingly moved to the defense. Tenten meanwhile was attempting to lure the creatures away from the pier, but Arata seemed to notice this - he said something to the jutsu user, and the creatures began to race over the wreckage in Hitomi and Lee's direction.

Lee tutted and clenched a fist. "Stay here, Miss Hitomi."

He made to leap at them, but Hitomi grabbed his shoulder. "No, we have to retreat. The odds aren't good and the Glade is just across the river. We can't defeat two elemental users as we are. Get the message to the others and I can disguise us."

"How?"

Hitomi smiled.

* * *

Through his Byakugan Neji saw two moths dart out of a willow behind the inn at a surprisingly human speed - he dodged a swipe from Arata's sickle and deactivated it for a moment, looking again. The moths looked like Hitomi and Lee, and the black creatures seemed fooled by the genjutsu too and chased after them. The real Lee then emerged from the tree and caught up with Tenten at the nearest edge of the pier, saying something to her, and kept running toward him. Tenten fled back toward Hitomi's tree.

"Jurou, recall your pets," Arata said. He was looking at the tree.

Neji didn't need Lee to tell him what the plan was. _She assessed this correctly,_ he thought and darted away. Lee reversed his step and met him midway, and Hitomi and Tenten were already bolting for the river. The black creatures bellowed and reversed their course.

"Miss Hitomi believes the odds are not in our favor, and that these things are made of carbon!" Lee called to him as they ran. "She says we should retreat to the Glade immediately!"

He did not want to admit agreement, but was more preoccupied with the scrambling masses of black that were about to cut them off. They leapt; the creatures blocked out the sun - they glistened and were jagged like shards of obsidian, and though faceless an unnerving grating and screeching sound came from them. Though Neji and Lee jolted to a stop, it was not quick enough to avoid impact. The creatures were mineral rather than animal, and cleaved and reformed themselves in order to move and avoid strikes; when they were struck, however, they were brittle and shattered easily, even if they did reform. However, penetrating blows on the part of either Neji and Lee or the creatures themselves resulted in the substance strengthening and attempting to bond with the new substance.

Neji dealt a palm strike to a spiky limb. It shattered, but the pieces spat at him like dozens of thorns and embedded themselves in his hands and forearms. He tried to swipe them off but now they may as well have been iron rather than straw. "Blunt strikes only!" he told Lee. "Keep moving!"

The creatures attempted to surround them, and the immediate area was becoming rapidly enclosed by walls of salt - the briney smell was back in the air.

"Keep moving!" Neji commanded again and they fought their way through what little space remained.

They were on the fragile pier, now, and ahead of them Tenten and Hitomi were standing on the water in the middle of the river, the latter with a cluster of moths fluttering behind her head. The pair jumped for some reason, and it took Neji a second to realize why - his and Lee's first steps off the pier were not onto water, but onto a layer of salt so thick it was as though the river had frozen over. He had been hoping that the water would slow the creatures down. They kept running, and Hitomi turned to take the lead. Her moths scattered.

"They won't be fooled by the same trick twice!" Neji told her. He heard the carbon creatures skittering on the salt.

"It won't be the same trick," she said. "Follow me."

The far side of the river had an eroded cliff-face for a bank and they were forced up the seventy-degree angle of its sparsely-wooded slope, attempting not to slip on loose leafmould and scree as the creatures chased after them. Salt senbons impacted the trees and flew by their ears. Neji didn't have the luxury of looking behind them to determine what Hitomi's new trick might be. Judging by the way the ground crackled and trees erupted in black, the other jutsu user - Jurou - was following them too, and his creatures were leaping upward and slamming down between them, attempting to separate and corner them. Amidst pummeling through them they tore through the undergrowth, trying to keep Hitomi in sight.

Neji leapt over one creature, his foot crunching slightly on its powdery back like newly-fallen snow. From this brief height he saw an ancient cedar - mostly a trunk with pale and red bark, like a scar - twisted by the elements sprouting from a slab of bedrock jutting out of the mountainside. Hitomi seemed to be heading for it. When they were a few meters from it, she suddenly lurched to a halt and turned around.

"The cedar - run up it!" she commanded and began to make a series of hand signs. They passed her; as Neji did so he heard her intone, "Mimesis," and he saw the familiar pale brown moth lift away from her collar. A faint tickle on the back of his neck told him instinctively that the same had happened to him and, glancing ahead of him, the same happened to Lee and Tenten.

A dark cloud of charcoal billowed overhead - presumably another jutsu. Simultaneously, the four moths drifted up to meet it and exploded with amber, gold, and scarlet chakra that faded into an iridescent, partially-translucent sheen; their tiny bodies unfolded like origami, and tessellated and joined into an angular screen that held back the cloud. The black creatures abruptly stopped and diverted their course as four shimmers traveled in different directions across the screen.

 _A genjutsu diversion._ Neji looked away. His feet were on the trunk of the great cedar, and Hitomi caught up with them. He thought they would stop at the topmost boughs but somehow, she ran ahead and kept going until she disappeared in an unexpected haze of blue. They followed her without question. He leapt…


	10. The Kantoku of the Takara Glade

**Chapter 10: The Kantoku of the Takara Glade**

They landed on their feet on solid earth, soft with moss. Hitomi, however, fell and rolled a small ways in the damp earth until she came to a stop against a rock. It took her a moment to attempt to raise herself, breathing heavily.

"Miss Hitomi! Are you all right?" Lee said as they hurried to her.

"Until the day after tomorrow, I'm weaker," she said. "The genjutsu," she sucked in a deeper breath, "and getting four of us through the gate took a lot of chakra all at once."

"The gate?" Tenten asked. She helped Hitomi into a crouched position and looked behind then around them.

Neji looked, too. The immediate area was heavy with cool mist and appeared to be a sort of scoop out of the land, as if a much larger rock had once rested here. There was no sign of a gate or portal of any kind. The faint brushstrokes of large trees could just about be seen over the rise. Crucially, though - the area far ahead of them was soaked with intense chakra.

"We're in the Takara Glade," he said. He looked down at Hitomi, "How?"

"I sent word that we were coming. The Kantoku let us in. Does the rest matter?" she replied wearily.

He held her gaze for a moment, then offered a smile, "I suppose not." After a further moment she returned it.

Lee took one of Hitomi's arms and looped it over his shoulders, helped her stand, "Then lead on, Miss Hitomi!"

She gestured vaguely in the direction of up, and they began to slowly ascend the gentle slope. "She told me that each Kantoku used to come to this ridge to wait for the apostles to return; Ku is too old to travel outside of the Hollow."

Tenten began, "What's…" but trailed off when they reached the top of the rise and beheld the true expanse of the glade that lay beyond:

Smaller than the Village Hidden in the Leaves, certainly, but the lazily-waving haze of blue-green tinged with more mist gaze the impression of depth. The sky overhead was covered in cloud and the sun was a weak pale circle, as though seen through ice, but the lush vegetation seemed illuminated from within. The horizon seemed limitless, somehow, in this ethereal light. Immediately in front of them was the fringe of a dark forest with a nearly indiscernible path through thick ferns, marked by a moss-covered stone lanternhouse. Beyond this, in the center of their view the trees rose in a mound, creating crooked ghostly silhouettes for them to aim for. There was a pervasive but not overpowering smell of damp earth, musk, and some kind of fruit; like the mist, somehow it wasn't dispelled by the breeze that gathered around them and pulled them toward the passage.

They entered. It was cooler and darker in here, with the undergrowth a mix of ferns, groundcovers and sleeves of vines hanging from tree boughs. Small flowers Neji couldn't begin to identify studded the fine greenery with jewels of violet, paler green, and white, and added a lighter fragrance that caught his attention here and there. The path underfoot was narrow and covered with fallen branches, but every so often a root-broken edge of a stone step would emerge.

"There doesn't appear to be any animals or birds here," Neji noted. Even insects seemed scarce. "What did the apostles eat when they were here?"

"Fruit, mostly. It's...well, the colony is dying. Or rather, its habitat is dying. They're running out of food sources," Hitomi, ahead of him still supported by Lee, said. "The saving grace is the symbiotic relationship they've developed with the fruit-bearing plants here, especially the hachimitsu fruit."

"So they ate everything else into extinction?" Tenten asked.

Hitomi hesitated.

"But moths don't eat other animals or birds, right?" Lee prompted.

"They did what they had to do in order to survive," said Hitomi. "But this is a sealed world. They don't travel outside of it as a matter of principle."

"Even if that principle means they'll die?" Neji queried.

Again Hitomi hesitated, and then chuckled, "They do like their principles."

Neji squinted at her back. _Like you, maybe,_ he thought.

"They're pacifist too, for example," Hitomi added.

Neji frowned more. "And you want to strengthen them in order to get revenge? Against their principles?"

"Ku and I have come to an understanding," Hitomi said.

Neji was about to comment on the ambiguity when, surprisingly, Lee did it for him. "Miss Hitomi, I don't feel it's fair for you to keep speaking in riddles to us."

"Sorry. Habit. I'm used to keeping things to myself," she said. "By 'understanding'...I guess you could say that Ku and I have placed a lot of respect and belief in the other. We're close. She's been like a mother to me in a way."

"How can a moth be like a mother?" Lee asked.

"What happened to your parents, anyway?" Tenten added.

Hitomi stopped walking for a moment, gazing ahead into the trees. By the way Lee prompted her and asked if she was all right, Neji realized that she wasn't merely being theatrically thoughtful and that the question had provoked some kind of distress.

"The Kantoku…" he began as a way to distract her, but wasn't sure how to continue.

Hitomi suddenly began walking again, drawing away from Lee's support despite the heaviness of her steps. Her voice was oddly cheery as she continued, "My parents died when I was ten on the way back from visiting my grandparents. Ku found me a couple of years later and I came here, with her. She's taught me everything she knows and showed me great kindness - it's far more than my parents ever did for me. My grandfather was kind and instructive, yes, but he could only do so much."

The ground dipped a little to accommodate the thread of a gently-flowing brook, which they crossed, and then ascended.

"I wanted to fit into the mold of a samurai - I truly did," Hitomi admitted. "But we each must do our best with the gifts we have. And I admire traditions. Leaving was a huge sacrifice for me, but I believe this is the best way I can honor my family."

Halfway up the slope Hitomi slowed to catch her breath, her ankle twisting a little to nearly make her tumble before she caught herself on a tree. They paused behind her, then Lee went forward and draped her arm over his shoulder again, smiling. They continued.

The path took them down into the land this time, through a series of gorges, bridges, smaller pockets of clearings, and through the soft skeletons of the remains of huge tree trunks. There was more and more water now, perpetually running from left to right.

"I wonder if those two could ever find their way in here?" Tenten asked as they navigated the ruins of a short, low bridge over shallow waters. "You know, Arata and the other one. Those black things were awful-looking!"

"Only those that are invited in can come in," Hitomi said.

"Are you positive that they're henchmen of Orochimaru?" Neji asked.

"Yes," she called back without hesitation. "It was only a matter of time. The Takara Moths' specialism in weaving and transforming natural energies would be a valuable asset to anyone, so as soon as he knew where to find me again then he would endeavor to claim the secrets of their jutsu for his own."

"But how would he know about you?" Lee asked.

"A man with a curse mark from Orochimaru killed my parents. I was with them that night - it was the Kantoku who protected me."

Neji was more preoccupied, however, with the more pressing issue of her negligence than he was with this reluctantly-given new information. He'd broached it the night before but was reminded of the urge to do so again. "But you advertised yourself. You prompted your own discovery. It was deliberate. Why would you deliberately put the colony and yourself - and us, if we're frank - in danger?"

The path, such as it was, came to an abrupt rise in the form of steps cut into the steep side of the gorge. Hitomi contemplated them for a moment before beginning to climb on her own. "Simple - to lure out our enemies so that I might defeat them when I am at my most powerful and protected."

Neji bit his tongue for once. The side of a gorge a few rungs behind her wasn't the best place for an argument.

It took them maybe another hour to reach the grove of taller trees they had first seen in the distance; what Hitomi proclaimed to be the edge of 'the Hollow'. The light had changed into the amber of evening, which suggested to Neji that somehow time passed more quickly here. Immediately surrounding the mound of trees was a moat-like gorge crossed by a narrow - and somehow still standing - railed bridge painted with flaking red lacquer. The gorge depth was mostly obscured by the enormous ferns crowding its sides and reaching out to touch the bridge. On the other side was the open mouth of a wider, clearer stone path flanked by two more stone lanternhouses. Hitomi led them through the mist over the dew-slick bridge.

The trees overhead bowed forward and it didn't take long, surprisingly, for the land to expose itself as a ridge, like the rim of a dead volcanic caldera. Suddenly the ridge stopped and they were looking over what was truly a mist-filled glade nestled in the palm of the caldera, trees reaching toward the middle. A small waterfall was directly ahead and the fruity smell was even stronger. The intensity of the chakra in the area was almost overpowering. Hitomi led them once more, this time down more steps cut into and curling down the caldera's side. Rocks and more trees obscured the view of what lay at the bottom, but Neji could pick out a series of shallow caves half-veiled by vines.

The bottom was eerily clean and clear - the waterfall fed a series of small ponds with traditional zig-zagging bridges over them, artfully-placed boulders providing a little interest, the mossy ground clear of trees and all but a few short lanternhouses, ferns and flowers. It was far darker down here and the scent of fruit and musk rivaled the chakra's potency. The entire floorspace was maybe the size of the Hyuga family compound.

"Ku!" Hitomi called and jogged across the bridge toward the caves. Neji could call it genuine excitement in her voice. "I'm home!" she added and something in him jolted a little.

They reached a mossy bank in time to be startled by a loud series of clicks and a scraping, like wood on rock. From the shadows of the largest, centralmost cave directly ahead, first the long antennae and the front legs appeared on its lip, scattering shards of rock. Then, a furry white head with black eyes the size of a man. Two more horned legs. The thing pushed itself free of the opening and began to carefully clamber down the short wall - Neji had been expecting normal moth wings but instead stood with his jaw agape as ten long, white, feather-like wings dragged themselves out of the cave and carefully flexed over them into the space. The moth's six legs - her two hind pairs longer than the front pair, and 'horned' with similar appendages - pillared around them. The chakra felt like gravity.

"It's - it's _huge_ ," Tenten squeaked as the moth stood above them, her wings alone nearly filling the Hollow.

"Best move," Hitomi advised. "She can't stand for long."

They moved back a ways onto a boulder and the moth lowered itself until her legs bent in steep arches and her body rested on the moss.

Hitomi walked forward and bowed, then rested her head against that of the moth.

"Hitomi," came a deep yet somehow still soft voice, like the distant rumbling of thunder. It sounded grateful - and tired. After a long moment Hitomi broke away and the moth titled to one side to see the trio better. "Have you...brought more...apostles?"

Neji bristled; they looked at one another confusedly.

Hitomi turned to them, practically beaming. "No - no. Not this time." She indicated each of them in turn, "Tenten, Neji, Lee - shinobi from the Hidden Leaf who helped me get here." Then she stepped away slightly to indicate the moth, "May I introduce the Great Ninth Kantoku of the Moths of the Takara Glade."

The Kantoku raised herself a little only to bow to them. Surprised, they returned it. "Thank you...for keeping my Hitomi...safe. You may...call me Ku, as...she does."

* * *

 **A Note from the Author:** Firstly, thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read and review! I'm grateful to all of you. Secondly, for those curious, I have based the Kantoku on a Pterophorus Pentadactyla.


	11. Roles

**Chapter 11: Roles**

Arata turned away from the desolate streets of Suguri, back inside what remained of the small inn. Evening sunlight came in slats through the broken roof, and his appetite was growing along with the smell of meat cooking in the back. He stepped through the rubble to the single table left upright in the main dining area, on which Jurou sat. The innkeeper, frowning, hurriedly put down a plate of pork and moved away to where his wife cowered behind a half-fallen door.

Most of the villagers were cowering at this point. Jurou's beasts stood sentinel around the entire town - he was not skilled enough to keep them prowling, but it was enough that they were manifest. The two of them were occupying the area in order to wait for Arata's benefactor, and for the Sage to emerge from her cocoon.

Arata sat on a bench at the table, swatted at Jurou to get down. He pulled the plate of pork closer and held a hand above it - he tensed his tendons, feeling the skin of his palm dry and a fine layer of salt form over it. A quick clench, and the coarse grains sprinkled in a thick layer over the meat. Satisfied, he began to eat with three fingers. Jurou's obvious discomfort, mute as he was, was an added amusement.

Arata swallowed his mouthful. "Don't worry, I have a good heart," he said and chuckled to himself. In his periphery, he saw Jurou begin to pace. "You must learn patience. By your age, I was able to remain still for hours on end." He paused. Jurou gingerly sat opposite him on a chair. "Eat. He will be here soon." He pushed the plate a little closer.

Jurou pulled his respirator below his chin, revealing fairly clean skin compared to his graphite-smudged cheeks. Similar clean rings were around his eyes - goggles were pushed up into his hair, which was so dirty Arata wasn't sure what color it truly was despite having worked with him for months now.

"You look like a panda," Arata said and helped himself to another cutlet.

Jurou scowled at him and took his own piece in blackened fingertips, scraping off what salt he could and leaving flecks of black in the juice.

"I don't know why you bother; you're just putting soot on it instead."

Jurou shoved the piece in his mouth and chewed animatedly.

"Eh now, enjoy it -"

The boy began coughing violently and spit the half-chewed meat onto the floor, grabbing a jug of water and gulping it down without stopping.

Arata laughed.

"At least you have that in common - always looking for something to slake the thirst."

Jurou put down the jug and hunched over, trying to make himself as small as possible. Arata paused eating only momentarily to glance at the shadow of the hooded figure in the doorway. That nasty-feeling chakra was enough to serve as proof of identity.

"What happened? You're normally one for ceremony and formal greetings!"

That was certainly true. But Arata did not feel like giving it today, mostly on account of not giving the boy a false impression. You only gave such things to those whom you truly admired. But he wasn't so stupid as to say that. "I am tired today, I suppose."

A small pause, and his benefactor continued. "Judging by the fact that Jurou looks anxious, and that you're both still here, our little sageling remains at large."

"You did not mention there would be other shinobi with her," Arata said and helped himself to more meat.

"Oh?"

"Three Leaf shinobi, including a Byakugan user. Ultimately it does not matter of course, but I did not appreciate the surprise." In the quiet that followed, he thoughtfully crunched grains of salt between his front teeth. "If historical records are correct, the Shining Week will begin the day after tomorrow. They escaped to the Glade. No doubt Miss Hitomi is preparing herself as we speak. Her Kantoku, however, is old and weak, and the colony does not have the strength to support her. She will not be as powerful as past Takara Apostles, if for no other reason than she lacks fighting experience."

"You are confident, then?" his benefactor said.

"Of course. You will get your samples, and your master his jutsu, and I will get my trophy. Everyone will be happy."

"Good. The Ice-user will join you tomorrow in preparation." The shadow turned to go. "I expect results, 'Arata the Collector'."

Arata waved a hand and went back to his meat, feeling the chakra retreat. When he was satisfied that there was a decent distance between them, he swallowed his mouthful and said, "A nasty piece of work, that one. Unique, but not the type of unique I would want to collect."

* * *

 _(Same day; the Land of Iron)_

Noboru lowered his bow and exhaled; his breath fogged in front of him. The sun was beginning its descent and the temperature was already dropping. He paced through the snow of the range toward the painted straw target to collect his arrows, trying to follow his earlier footsteps. Most of his shots had hit the red ring, some the yellow eye, but only one the black pupil - for some reason his aim was much better when he was on a horse, as though the extra height made up for something. He plucked them out one by one in a stiff bouquet, retrieved a stray from the ground.

The Three Wolves began to howl as he trudged back - their shadows were just about visible to his right. The wind was strengthening for the night, whistling around his home that sat unusually on a rise above him, its back propped up by pillars anchored into the range. He walked toward them and the steps that would take him up. He was hungry and ready to be in out of the elements. Looking at the Three Wolves made him wonder if his father was home yet and with him, maybe news of Hitomi.

Once he was inside and tucked away his quiver and bow, however, it was his brothers he heard rather than his father. He groaned inwardly but was obliged to greet them. _Who knows why they're here…_ he thought, though it was likely for borrowing - money or otherwise - rather than returning.

He found Makoto and Shouhei in their father's study, which rankled him enough by itself. They seemed to have already requested sake and were joking over some trivial thing. Nonetheless he smiled and bowed to them when he entered. "Elder brothers, this is a pleasant surprise!" He wished Hitomi were around to encourage him further, congratulate his thin patience, help him fend them off.

"Little brother!" Makoto, the eldest, greeted in turn. "Still here, I see. Come, have a drink." He took a third cup and poured.

"No, thank -"

"You should. It will warm you," said Shouhei and beckoned him. "Where is Father?"

Reluctantly, Noboru sat between them at the low table he was pretty sure had been brought in at their request. "I do not know," he lied.

Makoto's sharp face peered at him. "Are you sure?" He slid the cup to him anyway.

"I am sure."

The two older men hummed at each other. Although two years apart from one another, they were often thought to be twins and took this numbers advantage frequently. They were also taller than him, having taken after their father moreso than he, and liked to remind him that they were ten years his elder. They seemed to be in fairly good humor today, though, and did not press. But Shouhei's change of subject was worse.

"By the way, we meant to thank you for doing your filial duty," he said. "Luckily Mifune's granddaughter is too young for her to have been pushed off on either of us."

Makoto hummed an agreement. "You're quite brave, you know. You've got your work cut out for you, if she ever comes back." He took a sip of sake. "How embarrassing to be stuck with a fiancee that shirks our traditions and gallavants about the countryside after her own whims. Hardly how you want a wife to act. It's like chasing after a lost dog."

Noboru balled a fist, struggled to find words for a retort. _Maybe,_ he thought, _they're done. This isn't the first time they've teased -_

"At least you don't have to worry about in-laws," Shouhei said. "You would have had an invalid and a crazy woman, but Orochimaru took care of that for you."

"Good point, Shouhei," Makoto laughed. "That seems to be your only redemption, Nobu. She's not even that pretty, I'm afraid."

The two of them laughed while Noboru sat there, beating back feelings of shame - not over Hitomi, but of his tied tongue. He gritted his teeth and looked at the tatami mat. _If Hitomi were here she'd… Why can't I defend her? I'm such a coward! What's the - what's the worse they could do to me -_

"I'm surprised you're not out looking for your bride-to-be," Shouhei said.

The weakness slipped out of him before he could stop himself, "I would be if I knew where she was," he said glumly. His fingertips rested on the warm porcelain of the cup before him.

"Oh? You haven't heard? Even we've heard," Shouhei laughed and looked at Makoto.

"What?" Noboru's heart jumped in his chest.

"Yesterday she was seen in Suguri, by the Waterfall/Grass border," Makoto said. He seemed surprised, and his face even betrayed traces of genuine empathy with his younger brother. "I'm surprised they did not tell you."

Noboru frowned. His father had promised to tell him whenever any news of her came. Although prone to pranks, and he was well familiar with their general dislike of him, Noboru knew his brothers did not lie at least - it was heavily frowned-upon by their parents.

 _Why...why didn't someone tell me at once? What's being done? Is anything? No...they're trusting in the Leaf shinobi. But they're not back yet. They're failing. Someone - no, I - I have to..._

"Oi, Nobu."

Noboru was surprised to realize he'd stood, and was walking out of the study. He was heading for the armory, and calling for his horse.

* * *

 _(Same evening; Takara Glade)_

"You don't look like any moth I've seen," said Lee.

They were sitting in the mossy glen of the Hollow, still, at Hitomi's insistence so Ku could stretch her wings. Hitomi had lit the lanterns in the area and was moving around the Kantoku, carefully cleaning cobwebs and dirt off the white velvet of her legs, the soft fur of her body. She had found new energy being home like this, performing her prescribed tasks. She liked being an Apostle - taking care of the Glade and the Kantoku would make a nice life in of itself, even if she never became a Sage. Of course, that was no longer an option - she was the only one, and the duty fell to her. She would raise dustclouds as well as stormclouds of chakra.

"I am not...from this country, originally," Ku answered. Her voice had quietened and slowed since the last time Hitomi was here, but her enunciations were better.

"So if you're the ninth Kantoku, that means that the Takara moths have existed for at least nine hundred years!" Tenten said. "That's amazing."

"We are certainly...ancient," Ku agreed. "We were here...before any of your villages. Yet...we are not what...we once were. I am...fortunate to have found dear...Hitomi."

Hitomi smiled to herself. She tapped on Ku's nearest wing and the moth brought it lower, so she could walk the satin cloth down its length, work out the tangles in the feathering gently with her fingers.

"I am reluctant...to ask, but: we may need...your help with preparations," Ku said.

Hitomi glanced at Neji, saw the faintest of inconvenienced frowns but not an eyeroll, at least. She pretended not to see.

"Of course!" Lee exclaimed. "You can count on us in your time of need!"

"Not like we have anything else to do until Hitomi's ready to go home," Tenten grumbled good-naturedly.

Hitomi felt Ku tense under her hand, and she tensed too. They had not had that conversation yet. _Home…_ she thought, torn. Through the veil created by Ku's wings she happened to catch Neji's glance - still managing to be cold and judgmental in the warm lanternlight. _Of course. Of course he would sense it._ She looked away.

After a pause, Ku said, "We would be grateful. If...two of you can collect the...holy nectar from the hachimitsu fruit...first, Hitomi must begin drinking immediately. We...are behind schedule, in that regard."

 _Please let Neji go,_ Hitomi thought to herself. She didn't want to have that conversation with him before she had it with Ku.

"We will handle this, Tenten!" Lee said and stood, putting a fist on his chest proudly. "Where is this fruit?"

 _Damn._ Hitomi sighed, but came out from under Ku's wing. "If you go through this cave, on the other side is a rift which will take you back up - it's a bit of a climb, but the hachimitsu vine sort of rambles along the top and up into the trees. The fruit should be heavy and plum-red and low-hanging by this time in the year."

Tenten stood too and dusted herself off. "And the nectar?"

"It'll already be leaking out of the fruit, but it'll be easier to collect one or two at a time and bring them into the cave for pressing," Hitomi said.

"We...have a symbiotic relationship with...the fruit," said Ku. "As it feeds the colony, so...will it nourish the Sage." Her antennae twitched.

"What else needs doing?" Neji crossed his arms.

Hitomi mimicked him and looked at the cave. "If you can help me clean up inside - so we have a decent place to sleep - that'd be helpful. There's a lot of debris in the metamorphosis chamber, in particular."

"I must...clean the cocoons," Ku said. "Begin to wake them."

"I'll join you later," Hitomi said, "Pay my respects. Let me find Tenten and Lee baskets and a lamp."

Hitomi turned to go, but not before she heard Ku say, "Neji, was it? Help me...open the doors to the nursery. You...have thumbs. They are...bigger now than when they entered and...Hitomi must do as little as possible." She tried not to bristle.


	12. Homes

**Chapter 12: Homes**

The 'nursery', as Ku had called it, was on the other side of the Hollow. She managed to cross the great space in a few huge, slow strides, like some mighty sail broken from its ship had sprouted legs and pushed itself over the moss, stone, and gently-flowing water. Neji wondered if Ku could fly at all. He followed, trying not to look like he was hurrying. A glance behind him told him that Hitomi was handing over two large baskets with shoulder straps to Lee and Tenten; the lanternlight that uplit Hitomi's face illuminated Tenten's own as it was passed between them.

The nursery was set into the rockface atop a trio of shallow, long steps, and a series of sliding lattice doors guarded its contents from view, in turn half-shrouded by vines with glossy leaves and flowers the color of candlewax. The lattice was undoubtedly hand-carved, in a pattern of tessellated geometric stars the width of his hand. He assumed the larvae had crawled through the gaps when they were smaller. A couple of the doors on one edge of the wall had collapsed but the others were remarkably intact. Ku's antennae patted and ran over the doors in front of her, and she emitted the same clicking noise he'd heard on their arrival - affection, maybe.

"This one," she said and reached a forearm to the doorcatch immediately in front of her.

 _A supposedly superior affinity for transformation of nature energies, and they can't open a door,_ Neji thought with an inner sneer. _Her chakra is strong, too - strong enough that even someone like me who doesn't use senjutsu can feel it._ He walked up the steps and pulled out the rusted twin pins, which clattered against the wood. Unless of course she didn't need help…

He slid open first one door, then the other. On account of dead vines and other debris, this was not as smooth of a process as he'd hoped. Dim fire- and moonlight fell on what appeared to be little more than a shallow cabinet-like grotto of stone alcoves. The vast majority of them in the immediate vicinity were filled with pale, silky cocoons.

"You are...a Byakugan user," said Ku.

"I am."

"Could I ask you...to look inside the cocoons? I fear...some did not make it, and I...want to spare Hitomi the task."

He couldn't help himself. Frowning, he said, "Can you not tell, Warden?"

"It is part of their defense...while they are young, that the cocoons create chakra to disguise them...my chakra will be too invasive and could damage them. You should...be able to see which are moving within."

"How would Miss Hitomi have been able to tell?"

The Kantoku angled herself to look at him curiously, her great black eyes glinting. "She is the Sage," she said as if it was the only answer needed.

Neji sighed and activated the Byakugan, scanning over the fifty-odd cocoons. It took a moment to adjust to the sight of the green, gently-waving energy that shrouded all of them, and see past it.

"Hitomi would be...distraught if she sees that her hard work...has failed. But some always...die," said Ku. "Imbalanced chakra...disease… Normally these can be avoided when there is...more than one apostle, so they can be...cared for while one is away gathering chakra. She did not want...to go, for that reason but if she had not she...would not be skilled."

The thought of Hitomi being sad over anything was alien to him. They had that in common at least. Would she cry, he wondered? Was she that type? On the heels to these questions was why it mattered. And besides, anyone except the most heartless would feel remorse for the stillborn.

 _Focus,_ he told himself.

He could see the moths inside the cocoons now. Several were squirming, their chakra active and bright, but… He began to count. Five...ten...twelve...eighteen…

After a few long moments, Ku prompted, "So?"

Neji felt a sinking feeling on Ku and Hitomi's behalf. "Twenty-four have lived," he said and released the Byakugan.

"Of fifty-six…" Ku said surprisingly quietly for so large a creature. There was genuine remorse in her voice. "And we were hoping…" she cut herself off.

Her tone prompted, "I'm sorry," from him.

He thought she sighed. "It cannot be helped." She nudged herself forward and began to pass her forearms softly over the cocoons, stirring and revitalizing the chakra it seemed. It was harsh to see that she couldn't tell whether she nursed the dead or the living.

Though he wondered if he should remove himself, Neji did not. He wanted to use even this opportunity for information-gathering, since it seemed unlikely he'd get another chance to speak to the Kantoku without Hitomi present. He asked, as neutrally as he could, "How did you teach Miss Hitomi?"

"Genjutsu, primarily," said Ku. "Otherwise most...was up to her own study over...the course of her travels. But...the Shining Week will address many shortcomings."

 _So she acknowledges there are shortcomings to their methods,_ he thought. "Your genjutsu must be very skilled in order to imprint physical knowledge. Particularly if conflict is not your predisposition, as Miss Hitomi said."

Ku shifted a little; he moved out of her way so she could rest her silvery body on the steps. She was easily three grown men long, not counting her wingspan. "Each mythic creature that devoted itself...to producing Sages once specialized in...different areas. Our sage-kin...have either become more versatile, or have...become extinct."

Neji thought over everything he had been told - and deduced - about the Takara Moths and this whole Sage business, the unexpected route this previously simplistic mission had taken. There were still several gaps in the story, and a few things that didn't sit well with him. Most of all, however, was how it all would come to an end. Even briefly contemplating such a vague thing, in the dark such as this, filled him with a deep sense of foreboding.

"What happens when all is done, Warden? Miss Hitomi said you both had reached an understanding in order to achieve both of your goals. What happens once that's come to pass?"

"The colony lives," she said, as if it was obvious.

Neji rolled his eyes and wandered a few steps away, out from under her shadow. Ku, though kind, seemed as cagey as her Apostle and he deduced he probably wouldn't get any more information out of her - especially being an outsider. That aside, she likely didn't need him any longer, and so he could -

"I must admit…" Ku began, and he turned to her. "I was not expecting her to find you."

His brow furrowed. "Find me?" he repeated.

Without looking at him, she said, "Her first dream of the new year...was of you. Of course she, being...superstitious, believed it would come...to pass." Some kind of rattling noise danced around in Ku's body that he took to be a laugh. "I should have more faith in my daughter."

Neji wasn't sure which perplexed him more - the fact that Hitomi had dreamt of and predicted their meeting, or that Ku had actually referred to her as a daughter. To disguise his discomfort with both, he gave her a slight bow, excused himself and left her to tend to the unhatched colony.

He took his time walking to the other side of the Hollow; he wasn't ready to join Hitomi yet. He stopped in the middle of one of the bridges and looked up - the mist seemed to have cleared but the moon remained hazy, and there were no stars. The smell of fruit was overpowering in the night air and he even wondered if it wasn't connected to the moths' chakra, somehow, in that sense. It merely added to his abrupt urge to be done with all of this, and get home. This place was a plague on the senses and he didn't feel quite himself.

 _Home…_ He recalled the tension visible on Hitomi and Ku when Tenten had mentioned the word. _Obviously Hitomi hasn't discussed the notion of her returning to the Land of Iron when this is done. Ku must want her to remain here._ Neither option seemed viable and he wasn't sure why, but his intuition nagged at him. He couldn't imagine her cloistered away in a glade, committed to serve a dying colony - nor could he imagine her waiting in the wings of her grandfather's household, watching the endless snowfall. _What alternative is there, though?_

He looked down at the water moving underneath him and his undulating reflection staring back at him. He remembered her dancing on the bridge just the other night in what had seemed like happiness - he could still feel the peace it'd left on him, like a fingerprint on his soul. He remembered her humming, wondered what her actual singing sounded like. Perhaps that was why he was discomfited - neither of those 'homes' seemed like they would produce a song from her, only a half-hearted hum like a bird unable to fly despite having wings. Both the Land of Iron and the Takara Glade felt like endings, somehow. Cages, rather than skies.

 _That doesn't even make sense._ He shook his head. _Anyway it's not, ultimately, my business,_ he reminded himself. _We need to focus on getting through whatever this is, and completing our mission._ He continued walking.

* * *

 **A Note from the Author:** A slightly shorter chapter this go round, in preparation for a slightly longer one coming up! Thank you for reading!


	13. Divine

**A Note from the Author: For those of you sensitive to such material, at the very end of the chapter is a brief mention of child abuse. Although it is brief, please read with caution beyond the dividing line.**

* * *

 **Chapter 13: Divine**

What Neji had thought was a system of actual caves turned out to be grottos of a kind, set into tangles of huge ancient roots and boulders to create a small network of caves. It gave off an earthy smell he quite liked. Prior apostles had floored the usable spaces with ancient planks to make them even with the worn-smooth rocks underfoot, now dusty and muddy but still usable. They'd even managed to create a few rooms by sectioning-off areas with screens. Hitomi had lit lamps on the scraps of furniture that went some way toward dispelling the darkness, and they illuminated the occasional tendril of a vine to turn them into strands of jade. Among the older artifacts, he was surprised to see newer parcels and rations that presumably she had brought here over the past couple of years. He followed her footprints.

Neji found Hitomi kneeling on a frayed tatami mat beside a low table pinned into place by yet another oil lamp, removing an earring. It was so strangely intimate a sight that he flinched away and averted his eyes at first before chastising himself for his ridiculousness. He nonetheless paused to watch her through the carved screen as she pulled off the green stone and pearl and set them carefully into the dust, then held the hook in her palm - there was the tiniest flash of chakra. She plucked a hair from her head and, to his confusion, strung what was now a needle onto it, holding it out and letting it fall still. She watched it intently as it began to sway, winking silver at him.

 _Divining,_ he realized. _But what?_ He was more surprised by how it even mattered to him. He pressed his thumb into his own palm and the carbon splinter there, so that the pain could try to beckon him back to normality.

At length her arm dropped and she sat back, her head tipping up to look at the irregular ceiling of roots, rock outcroppings and earth. She sighed heavily as though annoyed.

"You didn't get the answer you wanted," he said to announce his presence, and moved past the screen into the room.

She masked her surprise well. "No," she agreed and, leaving the needle on the table, stood. She began to clear the room, as she had said was going to.

He helped her quietly. The room had an internal window of sorts to his left that looked out onto a chamber of sorts in the rock, like water and some larger stone had hollowed it out. He wondered if it was the metamorphosis chamber she'd spoken of. But the air was heavy, and Hitomi seemed intent to keep to the opposite side of the room as she moved more scraps of furniture and chunks of rotten root, removed wet mats. He noticed a stack of different-sized shiny lacquer boxes that, like the rations outside, she must have brought in recently, but he did not feel he could ask her what they were.

After a few minutes it was obvious there wasn't much more to be done without taking water and soap to the place, which wasn't going to reasonably happen. The two of them were reduced to shifting from foot to foot, looking around for something to focus on - anything but each other.

Hitomi seemed to sense the tension between them and he wondered if _she_ knew what it was. Her fingers ran over the lacquer boxes. "Any advice?" she asked. There was a tremble in her voice that surprised him. Just when he thought he had her pinned down, she always surprised him.

"Advice?"

"You've been a leader for longer than I have. When...when all this is done, that's what I'll be. It'll be a different road."

Neji took a moment to think. Though the work hadn't been tiring, he sat at the little table as though to rest just to have something to do, and looked out the window into the metamorphosis chamber barely visible in the weak light. "I don't know if I'm in the best position to be giving advice. Much of what's happened to me has not been planned."

She came and sat with him. "But you earned it. I haven't, really." When he glanced at her she elaborated, "Whichever course I took, it was going to be my destiny to lead. Either as my grandfather's heir, or as a Sage. It's only been in the past couple of years that I tasted a different life, had a break from all that. And now…" she looked at her lap. "I feel unprepared," she said and laughed lightly, brittly. "How silly that is."

She was being oddly friendly and open, and it coaxed the same from him. Disregarding their surroundings and circumstances, this could almost constitute a normal conversation. He smiled wanly. "It's funny that our circumstances could be so similar yet different."

"Oh?"

He thought how to explain, or whether he even should. "The Hyuga…"

"Are you the heir to the main house?" she suggested.

The thought nearly made _him_ laugh. "No. I belong to the branch family. My cousin is the heiress. For a long time I resented such a thing, even though I believed that destiny couldn't be altered - despite whatever advances I might make, I would still be in a cage. Belonging to my team, leading it on occasion, and my friends have since softened this for me. I even hope to help change the way things are done in the Hyuga clan someday."

They both sat in thoughtful silence for a few moments, and then Hitomi said quietly, "I'd never thought of destiny as a cage. More of a ladder or bridge. But…"

Neji looked at her in the honey-colored light. The mood had changed. She stared off into the middle distance and he could see the thoughts marching behind her darkening eyes, the faintest traces of panic tightening her face, how she shook her head slightly. He'd frequently thought she'd appeared older than she was but now she looked far younger. He felt guilty suddenly, for having introduced this thought to her. Like he'd shut the door of the cage.

 _No,_ he impressed upon himself. _Her destiny was already a cage, too. She just didn't see it._ Though he tried to be firm with himself it didn't make him feel any better.

At length she too seemed to try to rein herself in. She moistened her lips, blinked, resettled. "I'll become a Sage tomorrow," she said, mostly to herself.

 _Bolstering herself._

"I'll save the colony. Avenge my parents. _And_ I'll change the rules - I'll manage to go back to the Land of Iron afterward and take my place, with the colony and my power on my side. Somehow. I'll figure it out. I just need enough chakra. I'll be a Sage."

Parts of this didn't make sense to him, but the more pressing issue was how the distance seemed to be gathering between them again. Every time her becoming a Sage was brought up, he liked her less - she became something removed, ruthless, more of a force of nature than a human being. It reminded him uncomfortably of his younger self.

Neji pressed the splinter in his palm again to clear his head. As he released the pressure his mouth released the quiet words, "Will you ever be just Hitomi again?"

She looked at him in shock, swallowed, and as if to disguise it nodded to his hand, "What's wrong?"

He let her change subject. It was embarrassing, in retrospect, to have asked such a thing. "Splinter, nothing serious," he said.

Hitomi picked up the needle she'd been using to divine and held out her other hand, beckoning. He rolled his eyes and reluctantly held out the injured hand. They repositioned a little for ease of working, and he sat rigidly while she gently opened his fingers and held them firmly with her own. He could feel the callouses on her skin and thought idly how unexpected it was for someone who was still, technically, a lady. She angled his hand this way and that, and then began working delicately with the needle to remove the carbon. She was left-handed, he realized. By the way she was hunched over he could feel her warm breath on his wrist and see the nape of her neck under the collar of her shirt - the discomfort of both these things, however, was soon soothed away. Despite what she was doing, Neji realized this was the first tender touch he could remember in years, possibly ever.

There were a couple more splinters than he thought; she hummed as she worked without seeming to realize. He thought about asking her to outright sing but quickly quashed the thought. But he was relaxing - the tension in his muscles siphoning away, his mind growing quiet and his eyes unfocusing. He wondered if all along this was some kind of jutsu in itself but decided he didn't care enough. He closed his eyes and let himself have peace for one minute, two…

The angle Hitomi took with the needle was slightly off, and he flinched. She hissed an apology, cutting the song into silence. Her hands paused as if waiting for him to withdraw, but he didn't, and she carried on. He released a breath. Her head tilted to one side to see better, revealing an eye and a cheek to him, and it was unexpectedly charming how she pulled her lips inside her mouth in concentration. She had a stray eyelash on the precipice of her cheekbone.

"You'll go back to Iron, then," he repeated in an effort to distract himself from her, but his gaze wouldn't move. His words made it worse. It was still hard to imagine her returning, even though it'd been their objective this whole time - and why was it that he felt so heavy at the thought? His eyes were distracted by how she wiped off the largest part of the biggest extracted splinter on her knee.

"Your mission will be complete. That'll make several people happy," Hitomi said. When he didn't comment, she continued, "Yes, I will. It makes the most sense and I have things to do, there. Not much alternative," she gave that brittle laugh again. Her head tilted back upright.

"I'm sure there's alternatives, if you really didn't want to go back," he offered.

Again, he wasn't sure why. She was right to say that the mission would be complete once she returned to the Land of Iron, but not that he would be one of the people happy about it. Then…

 _Then this would be over. Her life as just Hitomi will be over in a matter of hours but more than that, our involvement would be over. Why is it that I've grown so attached -_ the same mild panic he'd seen earlier on Hitomi's face choked his thoughts.

Hitomi readjusting her grip caught his attention again. She set the needle down and worked out the last of the black fragments by pushing her fingernail behind them, as though to score a new line in his palm. The friction sent a tingle down his spine and his fingers twitched a little involuntarily. She brushed the fragments away comparatively gently, thoughtfully, even though he could have easily done so himself.

All grew impossibly quiet. He could hear them breathing. She hung on to his hand, her free one hovering above it, looking at its red marks and lines as if to divine from it as well. Almost imperceptibly, uncertainly, his thumb moved to brush her knuckle - so light he could tell himself later that it had been unconscious.

"You could...come back to the Leaf," Neji said quietly. _What? Why? Why would I suggest such a thing -_

"And...what would I do there?" she intoned.

Their eyes met, mirroring each other in the surprise of this new line of inquiry. Possibilities crowded his mind but he couldn't - wouldn't - speak any of them. Yet their clamoring seemed to have opened a rift in his composure, letting in all sorts of other thoughts and feelings too, and he fought to keep control, not give her any sign. All of this was too new, too unexpected, but her mouth was parting as if to speak and she really did have such lovely eyes, and maybe it was unwise but somehow, someway, he was leaning toward her - or was she leaning toward him? - and his hand was closing about hers and their eyes were closing too, and their lips softly met -

One of the ancient floorboards creaking startled them both, and they broke away, looking in the direction of the noise. There was no one to be seen.

But Neji knew, with an even worse sinking feeling, by the chakra hurrying away from them as familiar as his own by now. _Tenten._

He looked at Hitomi, who was rapidly collecting herself too. "I -"

"I'm sorry," he quickly said, remembering to release her hand. "I mis-"

"I'm engaged," she blurted, her eyes wide, her voice panicky.

"What?" This was the first time he'd heard this.

"Y-yes, I am. It's been arranged for a long time - a childhood friend, a son of one of my grandfather's captains. I - I shouldn't have done that," she shook her head, pushing herself farther away from him.

They stood. "I've acted poorly," Neji insisted. "That was unwise."

Her eyes lowered and she nodded, rocking from foot to foot. "Let's...let's just pretend it didn't happen," she said and rushed past him out of the room.

Letting her go sufficed for agreement. Neji took a deep breath and released it, running a hand down his face. He hurt. That new information hurt, and it was an even greater discomfort that it hurt. Not only were you not supposed to develop any kind of feelings for clients, _he_ was supposed to keep those sorts of emotions in check at all times - now all sorts of inconvenient but potent things had been stirred up, most of all because Tenten had...Tenten…

 _Oh,_ he thought. His insides felt like a confused mess, and there didn't seem to be any way to untangle it all right now.

* * *

Hitomi paused on the threshold to the apostle quarters, her warm cheeks cooled by the outside air. She glanced to her left where Tenten and Lee had fallen awkwardly silent, the baskets of the hachimitsu fruit between them; she and Tenten locked gazes for a brief moment. Was it hurt, she saw there?

 _Oh,_ she realized.

She thought about saying something but wasn't sure how or whether she could. Instead her mouth set itself into what she hoped looked like a regretful frown, and carried on her way through the lamplit dark to the gray, angular shape of Ku by the nursery. It felt like running to a parent for comfort - what it should feel like, at any rate - but she didn't care. She even jogged a little, her arms wrapped around her.

 _How dare he. How dare_ I _. And - and returning to the Leaf. Impossible! Ridiculous. Stupid of me…_

She ducked under Ku's wings and sat down furiously on the steps. On second thought she turned on her knees and made a hurried bow to the cocoons, then went back to stewing. It was then she remembered that Ku was oblivious to most human emotions unless they were verbalized. But did she want to verbalize? They were going to pretend nothing happened. Because nothing happened. And there was too much else to think about - too much going on.

"The kunoichi - Tenten. She said...something about you going home," Ku rumbled. "What did she mean?"

Hitomi wanted to listen and answer and discuss rationally, but her head was crowded. Suddenly she wanted Noboru's reassuring grin. She wanted Ku to at least be silent if she couldn't offer actual comfort. She wrapped her arms around her upraised knees, knocking her forehead on them.

"This is your home," Ku continued. "Such conversations have...no meaning."

"I know, because the apostle must give their life for the colony at the end of it all," Hitomi snapped. She was surprised there were hot tears in her eyes. "After all, how would a new Kantoku be chosen, and be able to live beyond the Shining Week?" She didn't care that there was spite in her voice.

"Do not be ungrateful," Ku said, almost growled. It was rare that Hitomi heard her anger - rare enough to give her pause. For Ku, however, it gave her voice renewed strength. "Would you rather I have left you to die? Either on that road with your human kin, or a slower, spiritual death when your skills wasted away inside you, unused? I have given you more than they ever could."

Hitomi kept very still, though inside she was shaking. She felt her mother's looming, dangerous presence over her instead of Ku. Her body was tensed for a slap, a shove. She bit her lip where Neji had kissed her, drawing blood.

She both heard and felt Ku exhale. Dead leaves skittered against her feet. Her voice was gentle and weak again, "And no. Remember? You are...going to live. You are going to...save the colony, _and_ live. You are going to be the first...like you said."

The words calmed her. She repeated them to herself until she believed them again.


	14. Two Kunoichi

**Chapter 14: Two Kunoichi  
** _(The next morning)_

Hitomi wasn't completely convinced that everyone had slept, much less well, in the single room they shared. She, for one, had been too jittery, both because of what had transpired with Neji and the resulting tension with Tenten but also with re-convincing herself of her likely survival rate and the success of her plan. Not to mention it felt like her parents' ghosts breathing down her neck rather than a draught whistling down the metamorphosis chamber. She had spent much of the night on her side, head pointed south, watching a spider skittering over the floor.

She was grateful when morning came and the shinobi trio seemed to decide, unanimously, to go train together before seeking out breakfast, and leave her to prepare. She spent a good couple of hours by herself clearing out the metamorphosis chamber - a cylindrical space maybe ten feet in diameter and stretching up at least two stories, criss-crossed with stone buttresses carved by past apostles - and making it as clean as possible. She could hear Ku outside warming her body in the sun, gathering energy for the coming night, but did not feel she could speak to her yet.

Hitomi dashed the last bucket of rinsewater over the centralmost rock, turning it a glossy black in the morning light. It created a dais of sorts and would be the spot where she constructed her own cocoon, and thus should be the cleanest, most sacred space. She placed the bucket behind her and watched the water dribble away into sandy gaps into the rocky floor.

"Miss Hitomi?"

She blinked dry eyes; the rock was dry too. _How long have I been standing here?_

"Miss Hitomi?"

Turning, she was surprised to see Tenten standing at the entrance.

Tenten smiled, "If you're hungry, we've managed to make breakfast."

Hitomi beat back a dozen other replies and questions, remembered decorum. "Thank you, but the only thing I can ingest from now on is the nectar."

"Lee and I have that ready for you, as a matter of fact," Tenten said. Hitomi didn't notice that her cheery disposition had faded, nor that a long moment had passed, until the kunoichi asked, "Are you all right?"

Hitomi smiled wryly to herself. "You don't need to worry about me."

A pause. "If you mean last night...about Neji…"

Hitomi looked at her then. Tenten didn't look sure how to continue, but was trying. Hitomi wasn't sure how to talk about it either with Tenten of all people, but she was certainly grateful for the opportunity. "I want you to know it meant nothing," she tried. She bowed, "Please accept my apology."

Another weak smile. "There's no need to apologize - it doesn't bother me. We're teammates - that's all."

Hitomi wasn't sure she believed it. But for the sake of fluency of the group, they both had to tell themselves things they didn't fully believe. She smiled back at Tenten, "Good then, I'm glad," she said, and clarified, "It was a mistake - one that we're putting behind us. I feel rather ridiculous, as it happens - when I get home again I'm actually due to become engaged."

This brightened Tenten's expression, as she figured it would. "Oh? Congratulations! Neji had mentioned that you were actually engaged already, though?"

Hitomi bit her lip, felt the cut there from the night before. "A half-lie. It's...been something understood between our families. I imagine once they rein me in, they can settle it formally."

"The Land of Iron is so different, isn't it," Tenten mused to herself. "You're only our age."

Hitomi hesitated, thinking of Neji's suggestion the night before - that she need not return there, nor stay here. "It's different, yes," she said. She turned on her heel to look around at her handiwork in the chamber.

She'd thought Tenten would want to avoid her as much as possible, so it was unexpected when she didn't leave and, in fact, continued, "Was that part of why you left? An arranged marriage?"

Hitomi smiled to herself as she thought of Noboru. "No. It really was as simple as I've told you. But…" Why was she thinking of these things? Talking about them? She felt heavy, and sat down wearily.

Again to her surprise, Tenten came away from the doorway and sat with her on the dais. "But?" she prompted.

Hesitating, Hitomi rubbed at the callouses on her hands, looked at the torn cuffs of her shirt and the men's hakama she still wore. What a far cry she was now from when she'd left - not that that was a bad thing.

She'd never had a chance to talk about it - the words were flowing from her before she could stop them. "When I turned thirteen...do you know what they did? They bathed me in milk and roses. Told me I was beautiful and would make a good wife. All things I had wanted to hear but when I did hear them, I felt pain. They did nothing wrong. They were kind. What do you do with all that kindness and love, that _expects_ so much? Sometimes kindness is a cruelty."

"When it's the wrong type of kindness," Tenten said quietly. Her tone made Hitomi look at her - the kunoichi was looking at the ground, thoughtful. "I know a little about what you mean. Sometimes you find out the hard way that people don't have the same standards of you that you do for yourself, and it's tricky to get them to be kind to you, encourage you, in the way that you need them to."

Hitomi made a soft noise of agreement.

Tenten looked up into the space. "That's why you left."

Hitomi did too, and nodded to herself. "Yes."

After a minute or so of companionable quiet, watching the dust motes in the thin sunrays, Tenten shifted and with her, the mood. "I doubt boys have to have these kinds of thoughts when they decide to become shinobi," she grumbled.

Small laughs.

Hitomi looked at Tenten, smiling, "Those two are lucky to have you. Honestly. I know I for one barely deserve your patience and forgiveness."

"Hey, nevermind that!" Tenten chided, covering her mouth bashfully. She sprung to her feet and turned back to her cheerily with her hands on her hips. "Shall we eat? Well - drink, for you."

Hitomi wasn't sure she wanted to leave the chamber; she counted herself lucky to be back on good terms with Tenten and while she didn't think Lee could hold ill-will toward her, Neji was another matter entirely.

The doubt must have shown on her face because Tenten said, "Come on," and held out a hand.

Hitomi accepted the help to stand. As they left the space Hitomi grabbed the bucket and broom she'd been using and brought them with her, leaving them just outside the door. The two of them passed through the quasi-temple and onto the narrow veranda, beyond which blazed the morning sun. The waterfall and the small river glimmered like a ribbon of silver and Ku's spiky body seemed to sprout from it. Tenten stretched as she hopped down onto the moss and headed for where Lee and Neji sat on a relatively flat rock with food between them. Hitomi followed at a slower pace, using a long glance at the nursery - its doors open to the sun and air - to gather herself. Her pensive mood faltered a little when she caught Lee waving enthusiastically at them in her periphery.

"It smells good!" Tenten said as they joined them on the rock.

"Our cooking is not as good as yours, but hopefully it's enough!" Lee said.

Hitomi lowered herself to sit on her knees, her back deliberately to Ku. She avoided looking at Neji next to her but a quick glance told her her was avoiding looking at her, too. Lee's bandaged hand entered her view to place a bowl of steaming rice and grilled fish in front of her.

"Sorry, Lee," Tenten said for her, "Miss Hitomi can't eat or drink anything other than the hachimitsu nectar from now on."

"Is that so?" Lee said, disappointed.

Hitomi raised her gaze to him, giving the bowl a polite nudge away. "Unfortunately yes. It'll be more for the three of you, though."

"Why is it called 'nectar' if it comes from a fruit, rather than a flower?" Neji asked. He was still looking at the rock between them but she supposed at least he was trying for normality.

"I don't know, come to think of it," she said, trying in turn, and added a slight laugh for effect.

Tenten reached behind her, where a lidless barrel sat on the ground lower than the rock. She dipped a ladle into it, bringing it up full of dark amber nectar as thick as blood, and poured it into a large cup. Hooking the ladle on the side of the barrel, she then handed the cup to Hitomi. She thanked her and began to take regular, small sips of the fruity, somewhat salty and yet sour nectar.

"What is it for, anyway?" Lee asked.

Hitomi swallowed a second time to get her latest sip all the way down her throat. "Nourishment, of course, but it makes it easier for me to control nature chakra, too. It'll make it easier for me to enter my stasis this evening, and Ku will use it in the final anointment. I should warn you, though - as I drink more and more, as time goes on it'll essentially make me a little drunk. I'll...I'll need help getting from Point A to Point B," she shrugged sheepishly, "and I've heard it can sometimes make apostles talkative."

"Well, we're used to 'talkative'," Tenten assured her.

"Guy Sensei is very verbose," Neji agreed around a small bite of rice.

"He's encouraging us!" said Lee. "He has so much knowledge to share, we should be grateful he's forthcoming with it."

Hitomi caught Tenten's eyes as she rolled them, smiling.

Neji changed subject, "This 'stasis' you mentioned - what is it exactly, and do we need to do anything?"

She shook her head, stared into her cup. "No, not really. I'll build my own cocoon when the sun goes down, and stay inside it for the night while I gather chakra. The colony will hatch while it's still dark, and I'll emerge not long after. Then the Shining Week officially begins, and I can do what needs to be done."

"Which is?"

For the first time that morning her and Neji's eyes met. His face was stern, like he was testing her. After all, wasn't it obvious what she was going to do?

"Go back to Suguri," she said anyway. "I'm sure Arata and that kid are waiting for me."

"But you have no way of knowing if Arata killed your parents," he retorted. "That's purposeless."

Hitomi squinted at him, feeling unusually panicky at this pointing-out of a flaw in her plans.

"Neji," Tenten scolded.

Hitomi blinked at him, set her expression into one of composure, began, "They're Orochimaru's -"

His eyebrows drew down. "Orochimaru has hundreds of supporters and collaborators. Are you simply going to hunt down all of them in a single week by yourself? There's merit in eliminating the immediate threat of Arata and the other one, but unless you have concrete data on who you're specifically wanting to get your revenge on, heading out there is reckless."

"Not all of them, no," she said. Her grip tightened on her cup.

"Then what are you going to do?" his voice was louder, now. Offended, almost. Back to square one.

"What I can while I can!" Hitomi burst. Her throat felt tight. She stood and stalked back toward the temple, cup in hand, regretting having come outside.

* * *

In his periphery Neji saw Tenten get quickly to her feet, too, and snip something at him that he wasn't concerned about catching. She picked up the nectar barrel by its rope handles and went after Hitomi. Although distantly curious over why Tenten was taking her side all of a sudden, he was focused, instead, on Hitomi's retreating back, with its darkened line of sweat that had bled through her shirt from hours' work already. That was real - that work was real. Her lofty, half-formed ambitions, less so.

"Neji…" Lee began hesitantly as the girls disappeared into the shadows of the temple. "You said earlier - we all agreed - that things were all right now. But you're still not yourself."

"It's not something I want to discuss with you," Neji said.

"Then who are you going to discuss it with? You've upset both Miss Hitomi and now Tenten."

"That hardly matters."

"Doesn't it? We still have a long way to go before this is over, and once it is, you still have a team with Tenten on it."

Neji played with the tail of one of the tiny fish in the pause that followed. Though his appetite was gone, he knew he needed to eat. But that only served to remind him how Hitomi couldn't eat, and now Tenten had abandoned her food, too. Even the most basic of things felt like they were unraveling at the seams.

"I...I know you don't think me knowledgeable in such matters, and it's true we don't talk about it much -"

Neji groaned inwardly.

"- but it seems to me that in matters of the heart, sometimes it helps to -"

"I cannot think you ignorant in something I myself don't fully understand, Lee," Neji said through gritted teeth. That was the most he would indulge the topic. "As I said, I do not want to discuss it. It doesn't matter. We are here to fulfil a mission, _even if it has rapidly gotten out of hand and is taking an uncustomarily long time for a C-rank_."

Lee went quiet at last. When Neji looked up, his friend's own eyes were downcast and he had taken up the rest of his breakfast, eating slowly and silently.

Aware that Lee was trying his best, Neji's frown relaxed; his eyebrows pinched and rose. "I'm sorry," he offered, picking up his own bowl. A small bite hovered in front of him briefly before he let it flop back. "I'm...not used to having to juggle these things and Miss Hitomi...isn't helping."

Lee rested his bowl on his crossed legs. "She doesn't seem to be used to juggling things either. I'm sure she has a lot on her mind as well." He hesitated, then said, "And Tenten?"

"I don't like that I've upset her."

"So you're worried about Miss Hitomi, and you're bothered that things may have changed between you and Tenten. Those are two things you know. Those are still facts you can work with!" Lee said.

Neji had to smile at the attempt at encouragement, even if it didn't help much. "There's nothing I can really do about either. Now is hardly the time, anyway. We'll just have to see this through to the end - whatever that may truly be."

Lee was thoughtful for a moment, and oddly sincere when he said, "Time helps. Things have a way of becoming clear. And...you know it's all right to think of how you feel once in a while, right? To think of what you want for the future. Even the best of us do."

Neji bit back one of his usual snide retorts. Lee was right, after all, even if he didn't want to admit it. "It's hard to think about the future with two unpredictable kunoichi such as them. I just want to focus on the mission."

"They - and whatever you may think about them - are part of the mission now, whether you like it or not."


	15. Ku

**A Note from the Author: For those of you sensitive to such material, following the first in-chapter dividing line is a scene that includes mild parental violence to children. Please read with caution.  
**

* * *

 **Chapter 15: Ku**

Neji sat cross-legged against the cool, damp wall of the metamorphosis chamber, eyes narrowed and arms folded. He'd managed to lull himself into a kind of numbness over the past few hours, only reluctantly coming inside when Lee pestered him to on account of the beginning of the evening's preparations. Lee was walking on his hands around the circular space while they waited; Ku had surprised them earlier by dragging her huge body over the outside of the temple until she reached the top of this chamber, and then spawned a smaller version of herself - about the size of a dog - out of her back in order to crawl down into it again. She was now walking over the walls from top to bottom in the opposite direction to Lee. Neji had used the Byakugan briefly to determine that she was coating the chamber walls in chakra, and then deactivated it in order to not become dizzy watching the both of them.

Tenten and Hitomi were faint shadows moving in the space beyond the paneless window to his right, in the room where they'd slept. He had no idea what they were doing, and he didn't feel like checking. Their voices were too low to make out words, but happy. He resented the others' happiness - something he hadn't felt for many years. He glanced up, determined that evening was well upon them. Ku reached the bottom of the chamber just as Hitomi and Tenten entered through the doorway immediately to Neji's left. Lee came upright at last.

"It's time," said Ku.

Hitomi's steps were heavy, and she had to be supported by Tenten. The Takara apostle had bathed earlier and had since changed clothes - presumably they had been some of the things in the lacquer boxes. She now wore black loose pants with the outer thighs cut out, similar to Tenten's, over which were knee-high sandals. An expensive-looking haori was across her shoulders - a violet-hemmed, blood-red silk that faded into an orange and gold leaf pattern, with a shimmering gold family crest the size of a coin in the center of her back. On her left hand was a fingerless black glove that disappeared up the haori's sleeve. Her hair had been combed, half of it loose around her shoulders while the other half had been styled and pinned up with the help of two dangling gold kanzashi.

 _I suppose I should have expected some degree of spectacle,_ Neji thought irritably.

"Thank you. I can make it from here," she assured Tenten, her voice equally heavy - almost drunken, as she'd warned them, but not slurred.

"Well if you're sure…" Tenten said and released her.

Hitomi pushed herself up the small slope of rock to the dais, turned around to them, and sat. Neji saw then that she had also painted her face the color of snow, and her neck bright red from the high collar of her black shirt to her jawline. That same red composed the traditional 'rosebud' shape of her painted lips, her winged eyeliner stretching to her temples, and two small dots under her lower eyelids. It brought out the vivaciousness of her eyes, like the night they'd first met her. Her eyebrows had been accentuated on their inner edges with black, defining where her nose began and making her appear threatening. He noticed too, through the strands of hair framing this mask-like face, that she wore only one earring. How he felt about this and the fact that the needle - created from the second earring - that she'd used on his hand yesterday was now in his keeping, he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure what he thought of any of it, anymore - only that her mask was now in place, and the gulf between them had thus become an ocean.

"You look quite fierce, Miss Hitomi!" Lee said. "Is this part of the ritual?"

Hitomi passed him a languid smile, "Thank you. And not really. I'm still a lady, after all, and there is an art to war." She took a deep breath. "I should get started."

Tenten hurried to pour the last of the nectar into five cups, in turn placing these at evenly-spaced intervals around Hitomi. "There you go. Err, good luck, I guess?" she smiled as she stepped back.

"Don't feel obliged to stay," Hitomi said. "Ku will be with me, and this will take some hours."

Hitomi glanced at Neji only briefly, and then closed her eyes. She tilted her head back and raised her hands, and after a moment the cups began to glow green-gold. Shortly thereafter, the nectar began to rise in steady streams until they met over her head. A moment more, and the streams branched out into smaller ribbons, locking together to create a cage-like construction, while a stronger strand rose upward from the very center until it met one of the buttresses and anchored itself there.

Hitomi herself became obscured by amber light, though Neji was fairly sure her body had lifted from the ground; the cage curled underneath her and completed itself, hardening into an open latticework of tortoiseshell. It didn't look like any cocoon or chrysalis he'd ever seen. Hitomi was obscured by a milky sheen of semi-opaque chakra and had moved into the foetal position on her back, hovering in the center of the cocoon. It glowed on and off like a heartbeat.

"And now we wait," Neji mumbled, and stood. He forced himself to leave the chamber, forget that anyone by the name of Mifune Hitomi ever existed.

* * *

The sleep came on Hitomi quickly. She felt herself sinking backwards into cool darkness, as though into water. The chakra within her was realigning itself, flowing in the opposite direction it once had and making her insides tingle, though it did little to alleviate how saturated and drunk with nectar she felt. It was hard to keep hold of her thoughts, and she gave up trying. They flowed in front of her as if they were happening to somebody else, and then they ebbed away entirely until she was left in a void, alone except for her heartbeat and that of the chakra. They beat out of sync, trying to merge, and it was loud in the silent space.

 _Hitomi didn't realize she was dreaming until the void was no longer a void, but far closer, and solid. She was in a closet. There had only been one time that she had been in a dark closet._

No, not this -

 _The door in front of her shot open, blazing lamplight into her eyes. Her mother's strong hand darted inside, followed by her whirlwind of a voice, and grabbed Hitomi by the collar and pulled her out onto the tatami mats. Her father was saying something but it was half-hearted and hard to hear over her mother, and anyway he was confined to his bed and his chronic pain - he'd never been able to do much good._

 _Hitomi's young body struggled, but her mother was strong. She was crying for her to stop._

" _How dare you hide from me! You disrespectful, obstinate child!"_

 _Hitomi fumed back, ripping her collar in order to get out of her mother's grip. She tripped in the process and this enabled her mother to grab her by the hair instead. The anger surged with the pain. Her mother dragged her out onto the veranda into the snowstorm and the two struggled with one another there, too, until the older woman slapped her hard across the face - hard enough to make her tumble off the veranda into the snow. Hitomi's wrist landed awkwardly underneath her, shooting more pain up her arm._

" _You will never, ever do that again, do you understand?" her mother shrieked down at her; her loose hair was wild in the wind._

What had I done? _Hitomi questioned her younger self. She couldn't remember. Did it matter? It had always been something with either of her parents._

" _I just wanted to make you happy!" Hitomi sobbed back but her fractured voice was lost in the gale. She held onto her injured wrist._

 _Her mother had turned before she had finished speaking and stalked back inside._

 _Hitomi's view shifted so rapidly out of her body that it made her dizzy. She sailed above her like a ball tossed into the air, and was suddenly looking over her own head and behind her at the forest edge. The view raced forward to it - Ku was rising out of the snow and emerging from the shadows with her great obsidian eyes, clicking at her. As with her younger self back then, Hitomi got lost in that gaze._

I will show you - _Ku's voice, echoing in her head, salving the pain._ You will be free.

 _Hitomi's chakra responded to Ku's reaching across the small yard to her, refreshing her, picking her up. She felt invigorated. Her anger was channeling itself into her body and pushing it forward, back toward the doorway her mother had left open to the elements._

I am those elements, _Hitomi remembered thinking as her feet carried her back inside._

 _Her parents' continued argument paused at her entry, but Hitomi did not. Her mother did not have time to grab her again._

You are those elements, _Ku agreed._ Use them.

 _She was not in control of her body. She remembered now. She was indeed the one that made the water rise from the cups, but it was Ku's instruction that helped her weave the hand signs to transform it into silver wire, and bind her mother and father. It was Ku that suggested fire could easily become lightning, but it was Hitomi that transformed the lamp's flame and directed that lightning as daggers that pierced their hearts. But which one of them was it that thought they looked like animals, harnessed by their necks, convulsing on the floor? Which one of them was it that demanded it was not enough, and made Hitomi take up her father's sword and pull it across their throats?_

 _Hitomi remembered that her footsteps, as she stumbled back, had left prints of fire. Ku had been on the veranda looking in through the paper door, and had flung a dead body at her. Hitomi had reacted immediately anyway, startled, and stabbed the dead man too. The fire was rising and Hitomi felt drunk on the heat._

It was this man. This man. Understand?

I understand.

 _The innkeeper pushed inside, shouting, followed by his wife with a bucket of water. Their eldest daughter had rushed in and hugged Hitomi close, tugging her away from the 'intruder' and the fire. Hitomi looked at the door to the dark outside, but Ku was gone. The wave of grief was swift._

* * *

It was well into the night when Neji was woken from his already-light sleep by the sound of groaning coming through the internal window to the metamorphosis chamber. Frowning, he rose and went to the sill to look. Ku was on Hitomi's cocoon, clicking at it and crawling over it, while the heartbeat-paced glowing had sped up considerably, beating back the moonlight that filtered in from above. Activating the Byakugan told him nothing conclusive.

Calmly, he walked out of the room in which they were sleeping and into the short foyer, then into the doorway of the chamber. "Is everything all right?" he asked begrudgingly.

"She's dreaming, that's all," said Ku. "You need not worry."

Neji wasn't sure what exactly had sparked his suspicion - not to mention trumped his determination to regain distance between himself and Hitomi - but something in the air had changed. He was sure of it. He didn't want to leave the room, even though the sleeping quarters were hardly far removed. He gave Ku a long look that she seemed to pay no attention to, before wandering around the perimeter. Hitomi tossed and turned in the sheet-like pocket of milky chakra inside the cocoon with another small whimper.

"Is this normal for apostles?" Neji asked, sitting.

"Yes," the Kantoku answered. "I wish I could alleviate it."

He could hear the genuineness in her voice. It reminded him of the night before by the nursery when she'd called Hitomi her daughter. "Not all suffering can be relieved," he said. "Nor should it."

"Spoken by someone who has...found no relief for his own and...seeks to find some merit in it...instead," Ku said. She settled on the crown of the cage-like cocoon and made her wings into a shivering cape over it, facing him.

Her eyes unnerved him. Even in her smaller form they were the size of serving bowls, completely black, and though convex they seemed to gather everything into them like two voids. No emotion could be deduced from them, nor what direction she was truly looking in. Nonetheless she had a certain gravity to her stare that he supposed he should have expected from an ancient creature. Like she could see not just his chakra, but his soul.

"But you did find...a small breath of relief...didn't you?" she said gently.

 _Hitomi,_ he remembered. There was a note of her hum in the groan that leaked out of her cocoon and seeped to the floor. He did not want to think about this now but it was there, and Ku's stare seemed to be giving it extra potency. Even the memory of it was calming.

After a moment Ku began to crawl up the stem of the cocoon. "The colony will be waking shortly...in preparation for Hitomi. I must go to them." She disappeared up the buttresses out of sight.

Drowsiness crept upon Neji at an alarming rate. However much he fought it, his eyes closed and he fell asleep against the chamber wall.


	16. The Descent of the Sage

**Chapter 16: The Descent of the Sage**

 _Crack-crick. Snap. Crunchcrunchcrunch._

Neji's eyes forced themselves open a crack at the noise. He felt disoriented, and it took him a moment to remember that the floor he was staring at just past his nose belonged to a cave-chamber of the Takara Glade, and that he was with his team on a mission. His limbs took a further moment to respond.

 _I slept so heavily I slid over onto the floor without realizing?_ he thought groggily. _Something's not right._

The crunching sound caught his attention again. He rose onto one elbow and through his bleary vision saw a two-dozen-strong cluster of different species of cat-sized, subtly-glowing moths crawling all over what remained of the amber-colored cocoon, each other, and Hitomi, eating that divine cage. Their colorful, erratically-waving wings and glinting legs moved around and over one another, antennae like feathers springing free every so often, and intermittent glimpses of Hitomi's pale face and bright haori between them. Spore-like wisps of chakra escaped into the air as they rubbed together. It was a large tessellating ball of angular shapes, made into something unnerving by the gruesome sounds of their feast. Ku hung above them on the buttress, pointed down like the tip of a sword.

Neji warily rose to his haunches. The colony suddenly took flight and he reflexively raised an arm to shield his face, but they merely fluttered about before alighting on every nearby surface. The cocoon was completely gone. The breeze from their movement died down, and Hitomi was revealed to have stood in midair a step or two above the stone dais. Her shoulders were drooping and her head slightly tilted, her mouth parted and eyes so narrowed he wasn't sure if they were open.

 _Is she asleep? In a trance?_ he wondered. He was about to call to her when Ku lifted from her position on the buttress and hovered in front of Hitomi, whose head tipped back.

"I, the Ninth Kantoku, thus anoint you - Mifune Hitomi, devoted Apostle of the Moths of the Takara Glade - the Eighth Radiant Silk Sage," she said, and her front legs moved over Hitomi's eyes. "Awaken. Our Shining Week has begun." With a few flaps of her wings she flew to one side.

Hitomi swayed where she stood, eyes closed. He had to admit that she looked resplendent in the moonlight, not counting his estimate that her chakra had increased fivefold. Pale blue-green powder the color of luna moth wings had been dashed either side of her nose over her eye cavities and temples. Her eyes opened a crack, looking at the ground. One hand hesitantly reached out, feeling here and there, seeking something to hold onto.

Neji stood and stepped onto the dais, taking that cold hand. Although Hitomi tried to keep her posture, it was like helping an exhausted or drunk person down the stairs and it was a wonder she didn't trip. Once they were off the dais she collapsed to her knees in his grip, her chin to her chest and her hair hiding her face from him. This was hardly what he expected. What was wrong with her? Would it wear off?

He crouched in front of her. "Hitomi? Hitomi." Why was his heart racing as much as it was? Hadn't he put this behind him?

Her grip tightened on his forearms. She was mumbling something, her voice anxious. He brought his ear closer to hear better. "Not...the truth - the truth - no."

He repeated her name but she didn't seem to hear him.

Her head snapped up - he was startled to see that the green of her irises had been replaced by inky black in one and milky white in the other. Both were open wide but unseeing. "Not the truth," she repeated over and over at him, beseeching, her voice slurring and guttering out, her body hanging onto him.

Neji frowned, feeling on edge despite himself. "Hitomi can you hear me?" he demanded once, twice. She didn't respond.

Abruptly she froze. She swallowed and breathed deep. It was like a switch had been flipped. Her body seemed to gather energy and start to support itself. Her eyes darted this way and that, her head turning, as though she were trying to detect something. Then her face contorted in anger. She flung herself to one side so that she faced the dais - and Ku.

" _You_ ," she growled. "What have you done to me? This isn't how it was supposed to be!"

Ku fluttered down to the dais and skittered forward, clicking at Hitomi rather than speaking. Neji watched Hitomi's face go through more anger, and then confusion.

"You didn't tell me this would happen!" Hitomi yelled.

 _Ku is telepathic?_ Neji assessed. _Either she doesn't want me to hear the response, or Hitomi is deaf._ He looked back and forth between the Kantoku and her apostle. Hitomi did not seem to have the energy to drag herself forward. Ku continued clicking at her placatingly. "Hitomi, look at me," Neji demanded. Again, no response. He held out a hand into her periphery and waved it, and received no response either. _She's -_

"You took my sight! You took my hearing!" Hitomi shouted at her mentor. "You took -"

"Kantoku, what is this?" Neji demanded.

"Neji!" said Lee as the commotion brought him and Tenten into the chamber.

"What's going on?" Tenten asked.

"She is in shock," Ku said. "Exiting the stasis for the...first time can bring on delirium."

"You didn't tell her she would be both blind and deaf," Neji said.

"Our weakened state means...that certain physiological compromises...must be made in order for her abilities to have any potency," Ku answered. "I had no choice." The rest of the moth colony were fluttering into life behind her - Neji could swear they were anxious, too. Ku, however, remained calm.

Hitomi half-lunged, half-fell forward; Neji held her back and up. "Ku…" she said, and the anger in her voice had disintegrated into hurt. Her hand latched onto Neji's but he couldn't tell whether it was to push it away or for reassurance.

The chamber was silent except for the beating of the colony's wings. Neji stared at Ku - whether she stared back at him or at her apostle was, as ever, unclear - while he debated what to do. It didn't take him long. "Lee, Tenten - get our things quickly. We're leaving."

They moved fluidly. Neji gathered an unresisting Hitomi into his arms and backed out of the chamber, and once they were through the doorway Lee and Tenten rushed to get what little they'd carried with them. In the dark, the comparatively bright space seen through the doorway Neji kept an eye on Ku, but she merely stared in their direction, letting them go. The colony, however, was flowing into the caves after them. Neji was alarmed at first but they seemed intent on merely following their Sage rather than preventing her leaving, and Ku let them go too.

When they jogged into the Hollow they filled its moonlit peace with activity; the two dozen moths took flight around them and dappled the ground with a different kind of shade as the group headed for the narrow stairway cut into the side of the caldera. Neji maneuvered Hitomi onto his back for ease of ascent and after a few minutes he could feel his collar growing wet where she rested her face. Through the trees he could see the colony glow in the moonlight as it too ascended above the canopy.

"No sign of Ku," Tenten, ahead of him, said. She held his pack and Hitomi's katana in one hand, using the other to push aside branches and vines in their path.

"The rest of the colony doesn't appear to want to stop us, either," observed Lee, "but I would have thought they'd remain behind with the Kantoku."

"Maybe they're more loyal to the Sage during the Shining Week," Tenten suggested. "Didn't you notice that they seemed anxious back there? They probably want her to be safe."

"We don't know that they could do anything to us, anyhow, or would even if they could," Neji said despite agreeing.

They reached the rim of the caldera quicker than expected; the colony was hovering above the treetops, waiting for them, and once they spotted the humans they began the descent down the other side. The paved path, then the bridge ahead. The moths were hovering in the space over it and Neji hesitated despite his earlier words. They clicked at them in the same manner Ku had done to Hitomi. Neji felt her pick her head up.

"I know." Her voice was low and warm at his ear, making him shiver though she wasn't speaking to him. "And I'm thankful."

"How are we supposed to communicate with her?" Tenten said as she came into his field of vision.

"Does the colony understand us?" Lee asked. "Maybe they can send a message, so to speak, since she seems to understand them."

It was worth a try, Neji supposed. He took a couple of steps onto the bridge and looked up and around at their myriad of jewel-like colors. "You felt it too - that there was something amiss with your Kantoku and what she's done to your Sage," he said. "That's why we're leaving." He hesitated, reluctant to divulge a half-formed plan. "We need to get out of this Glade - for your Sage's wellbeing. We're here to protect her. However you can help us, we'll be grateful."

There was no way he could be certain, but he swore the colony looked to Hitomi. One of them clicked at her for a few long moments, and then all was quiet.

"Neji," said Hitomi. Being addressed so directly, so close, so suddenly, nearly made him lose her grip. "We can go to the edge of the Glade, but I'll need to figure out how to get us out. I can't see or hear you, but I can see chakra beautifully. I don't know how long this will last, but I'll get ahold of my body soon. Sorry." Her head rested on his back once more, but only for a moment before she added, "Can you put me down, please?"

There was no arguing with a deaf woman except to count on her inability to walk to become quickly obvious. Neji released his grip on her thighs and she slid down his back until her feet met the ground. He stepped away but held onto her arm for support yet she pulled herself forward. Although he hadn't been carrying her for long already it felt strange to not have her weight on his back.

"What're you doing?" he sighed to no one in particular as she knelt on the damp, flaking lacquer of the bridge, just about managing to keep herself upright without her hands.

Hitomi took off her haori one tired, uncoordinated arm at a time, revealing that her top underneath was completely backless. "Best for you to stay with me," she said. Her voice was heavy, still sad for a reason he couldn't attribute to having lost one's sight or hearing.

The colony descended - Neji ducked out of the way of the swarm, which was surprisingly loud up close. The moths glinted as one, like a shattered blade, and then glowed more softly as they shrank from the size of housepets to that of regular moths. One by one they landed on Hitomi's back, flattening to her skin until they were absorbed into it, leaving behind glowing portraits that created a symmetrical, circular pattern with barely any space between them. The glow abated; it looked like someone had tattooed them on her, and as if to hide the criminal undertone Hitomi hurriedly drew her haori back on. As though forgetting herself, she tried to stand but failed, and instead held out a hand in Neji's direction without looking at him. He scoffed and helped her onto his back again. No doubt whenever her senses were restored she'd have a joke at his expense about the whole thing.

The group carried on across the bridge.

"This whole thing has been really botched, hasn't it," Tenten said. "I feel sorry for her."

"Me, too," agreed Lee.

"We should never have allowed her to come here to begin with," Neji said.

"True, but we couldn't have known it would turn out like this."

"Couldn't we?" Neji said. "It would have taken a miracle for things to have gone as Hitomi planned."

"Once we manage to get out of the Glade, we're taking her to the Land of Iron at last, right?" Lee asked.

Neji readjusted his grip on their charge. "Not yet. We'll need backup, and shinobi that are more familiar with genjutsu. We won't find the latter in Iron."

Though the eyes of the colony were no longer on them, Neji still felt as though they were being watched. He couldn't help but remember the strange way in which Ku had let them go, and her bottomless stare. Was she really too weak to follow them? Had all her influence evaporated? Was she truly regretful over what had happened to her adopted daughter and had finally given into despair? Now that there was space to think about the entire proceedings, there was still too much that didn't make sense - beyond the obvious.

He thought back to Hitomi's murmurs of, _"Not the truth."_ What had she meant? That how she'd turned out hadn't been 'the truth' that she was promised? It didn't seem to fit. And she'd been so desperate to impress that simple fact on him, so unable to elaborate, and was abruptly silenced. He had to wonder if that silencing, too, had been Ku's doing. But why wasn't Hitomi speaking of it now, and why would she take away their best means of communicating with her?

 _I feel like we'll never get to whatever truth there is about this whole mess,_ he thought.

* * *

 **A Note from the Author:** Thank you to everyone who's read and reviewed! It brightens my day!


	17. A Wealth of Lies, I

**Chapter 17: A Wealth of Lies, I**

"If I may say so, Lady Tsunade, it is your own fault for spreading your library across many locations like this," said Katsuya as she expelled a relatively thin, leatherbound book from her body.

"Well, I'm grateful to you," Tsunade grumbled and slid it closer to her on the desk. "I don't recall stowing this volume at Shikkotsu, and it's a shame it's taken so long to find it, but at least we have it." She wiped away sticky grit from the title - _A History of Summons, Volume XI: the Takara Silk Moths_. It was an old series; much of the information was at least a hundred years out of date but, considering they had previously assumed the moths to be extinct and had been proven wrong, it was worth a look.

"I think you forgot it there one visit."

"Sounds like me," Tsunade smirked. She opened it and settled back with it in her lap to flick through the contents, dipping in and out here and there for anything potentially useful while she drank her early morning tea.

 _"...Their offense tactics tend to be lacking as a result of their pacifism - although it may be the other way around - yet their defense could be said to be one of the most sophisticated of all the known Summons. Known strategies include cloning techniques, chakra suppression and dispersal, and of course their extremely delicate weaving of nature energies into advanced substitutions and intricate - and often multi-layer - organic genjutsu. Primarily these abilities have been employed for camouflage and other disguises in the interest of protecting their colony, and their apostles typically share the same ethos. However, it is prudent to note that one must not be complacent, as these strategies in the hands of a more aggressive Kantoku, Apostle, or Sage, should there ever be one and given the right motive, can easily be used in a militant fashion."_

Tsunade raised her eyes to give this some thought. Of course it fed her paranoia, and though she tried to keep it under control she couldn't help but wonder if either part of that equation - the current Kantoku, the current Apostle-Sage, or the motive - was an actuality, particularly now that the colony's very survival was on the line.

 _But one has to wonder why they didn't reach out for help...if they did, steps might have been taken to ensure their survival,_ she thought. _And yet my understanding is that the current Kantoku, in all of two hundred-odd years, not only did_ not _seek help but could only find one person suitable to become an apostle? More to the point, that this single apostle was then pushed to become a sage, rather than devoting her energies to finding other apostles or other help. Or was that Hitomi's idea? Even I can see that's a bad gamble._

She skipped ahead a few pages to the subsection regarding their sages.

" _...so-called 'Radiant Silk Sage' is a privileged semi-permanent state granted by the Kantoku to the most capable apostle during the Shining Week only. While the state has been known to increase many of the apostle's skills by four- to six-fold, it is not considered 'sage mode' as other Sage-producing Summons know it: this is yet another stage into which the Sage must enter, the duration of which depends on the individual but nonetheless endowing them with an additional increase in most of their abilities by another four- to six-fold."_

 _That's not unusual,_ Tsunade thought.

" _The peculiarity of this practice lies in that it serves no obvious purpose beyond sustaining the colony and passing on its teachings. It is presumed that the Sage, during the Shining Week, not only oversees the cocooning of future moth generations but also the acquisition of new apostles, and the taking of any additional steps toward ensuring the colony's wellbeing. Crucially, though - and testimony to the harmony between the colony and their human keepers - is the Sage's final duty at the end of the Shining Week in choosing the next Kantoku."_

' _Final'?_ Tsunade read ahead quickly.

" _Although the process is unknown, it is understood that the Sage chooses from the current brood a new Kantoku, who is then given the entirety of the Sage's recently-acquired abundance of chakra and thereby granted the ability to live for the next one hundred years until the next Shining Week. Both the old Kantoku and the Sage forfeit their lives in order to restart the cycle."_

Tsunade breathed in sharp and deep, marking her place with a finger as she folded the book to her and turned her chair to the window. _Surely not. Maybe it's a metaphor._ It did not, however, appear to be a metaphor on further reading. Tsunade forced herself to confine the thought for later, when she had as much information as possible. _The more pressing issue is the safety of Team Guy._ She flicked back a few pages.

" _...there comes an interesting dynamic between Kantoku and Apostles, and of course, Sage. Naturally, the testimony of only one such rogue Apostle cannot be taken as ultimate truth, but it bears mentioning. Being as they are so naturally compatible with genjutsu, it is not wholly unexpected that they should apply this to the colony's wellbeing. That is to say - it is not unheard of for the Kantoku, Apostles, or Sage to cast genjutsu on the colony or on each other, under the premise of keeping harmony and leading the colony toward its best interests."_

"'On each other'?" Tsunade repeated, squinting.

" _Such a practice could perhaps be forgiven and indeed overlooked by the outside world due to its confinement within such a short period of time, and not involving said outside world. No doubt it has been fine-tuned over its eight hundred -year history to support a colony of a certain size accustomed to precise mathematics in its cycles. But one has to wonder if, within this web of well-intentioned lies, there is not the chance of things getting lost in translation, or of unwanted consequences - particularly since their genjutsu tends to be multi-layered, begun subtly, and hard to detect once in place, to speak nothing of untangling and releasing each. If we also consider that the Takara Moths appear to be shrinking in number, one must also wonder if those precise mathematics can be re-tuned to prevent their own lies leading them to destruction."_

* * *

For lack of any other ideas, Neji had taken them back to where they'd first entered the Takara Glade - the scooped-out miniature valley where Hitomi had said past Kantoku had once came to meet their apostles. Nothing had changed, least of all an appearance of a gate. Hitomi, however, had begun holding her head up, which he took to be a good sign. Not that he was particularly happy with her. In fact, now that the distracting walk was over and a hazy early morning was breaking, his anger with her was rising, too.

Tenten was hellbent on examining the surrounding area for any kind of gate, and Neji didn't dissuade her. He set Hitomi down against a moss-covered rock perhaps more roughly than he should have, but she said nothing. A glance told him that the irises of her eyes were still black and white, and though they could not exactly meet his own, he noticed that she could now at least pinpoint the direction of his face by the way those eerie eyes rose when he stood, towering above her.

"Yet again…" slipped out of his mouth. "Yet again you're closing yourself off. Keeping more secrets." He looked over her mask-like painted face, blank in its blindness and deafness. He resented having thought her lovely a night ago, however briefly. The resentment and frustration grew and grew, faster than he was able to control. "Why - why won't you…"

Lee began, "Neji, she can't hear -"

"Why won't you be yourself again?" Neji shouted at her. He couldn't stop. "Stop this fruitless charge into 'destiny' or whatever you think it is. Enough hiding. Enough riddles, enough theater! I'm sick of it. You could be a remarkable shinobi if you'd just get over your desire to be a martyr." He attempted to calm himself, looking away, "It's all the same that you can't hear me now - you wouldn't have heard me before." But she had listened, hadn't she? Night before last, when she'd asked for his advice, when he'd suggested - he was drawn to look at her again.

A couple of tears were trickling down her face, no longer as impassive as it had been. Her eyes met his own - the black and white were relinquishing their hold, letting the peridot green reemerge like spring from wintery earth.

He straightened. "Can you…"

"I hear you," she murmured. "I told you I would have control over my body soon."

Embarrassed, Neji turned away. Tenten and Lee were hovering uncertainly by the ridge. He heard Hitomi shift and could just about see in his periphery how she patted away her tears, composed herself too.

She took a deep breath, and spoke quietly, measuredly, "The colony is helping me regain my chakra until I can more fluidly tap into the natural energies. At that point it shouldn't take me long to figure out how to open the gate - today at most. Then...then I will fight Arata and his companion, and whoever else I have to, as planned. That is the only truth I know."

Neji was down on his knees and grabbing her by the shoulders before he was fully conscious of having moved, shouting into her face, "You _obstinate_ , self-destructive - No, this ends here. I am taking you directly back to the Leaf. I refuse to let you do otherwise any longer." Her words when she emerged from stasis came back to him. "And you yourself said that this was 'not the truth'." He shook her. "What did you mean? Tell me what you meant by all of this!"

"Neji get off her!" Tenten said as she and Lee managed to pry him away from her.

"I can't tell you because I don't know!" Hitomi shouted back. "I don't remember saying that. The only truth that became apparent to me was that Ku...she…and I..."

"Let me guess, you can't tell us," Neji sneered. He straightened his shirt as his teammates let go of him.

Hitomi looked at him sharply. "I'm reluctant to say because it's personal, and I barely know you."

Neji flinched.

"But since you're so insistent," she continued, sneering back, using the rock to pull herself to her feet, "I will tell you: while I was in stasis I dreamt of the death of my parents. Something I've tried very hard over the years to repress and - I don't know if I repressed the truth of it, too, or whether the truth was twisted for me, but - I saw that it was me who killed them, under Ku's instruction. She planted a body with Orochimaru's curse mark at the scene, made it look as though I was defending myself. I grew up believing a lie, whether it was one I told myself or one that she told me. My whole life has been based on this lie!"

"Then why stay on the path that was set by that lie, now that you've seen the truth?" Neji countered, refusing to be swayed.

"Because it's too late now! I am what I am!"

Tenten placed a hand on Neji's shoulder to stop his next remark. He was surprised to hear her chime in, "That's not true, Miss Hitomi. It's never too late to change course. Your priorities need to shift, that's all - you don't need to seek revenge anymore. You can concentrate on simply defending the colony, the Glade, like all the other Sages have done." She paused, noticed that both Neji and Hitomi were calmer, and then added, "And we can help you. You're right that we're going to have to do something about Arata and the other one, because they're probably waiting for you. But that's all we have to take care of."

Neji noticed that Hitomi looked sadder and more defeated than he expected her to, and it didn't seem like it was because of the admission about her parents' deaths. He scowled. _Yet another thing she's keeping from us - what is it? Is she really so sad that she won't get to be a martyr for a surrogate mother who betrayed her from the very beginning?_

"Tenten's right!" said Lee. "You need time to figure out how to get us out of here anyway, so we have some time to form a plan!"

"We can train you, even," Tenten said, "so you'll know what to expect from shinobi battles."

"If you think there's a point to it," Hitomi said.

"Eh?"

Hitomi started to speak, then closed her mouth, looked at the mossy ground. She shocked Neji, though, when she tried again. The sadness was in her voice, now. "All Sages die at the end of the Shining Week. They give up their chakra to the next Kantoku."

 _Oh,_ Neji thought. _That's what it was._ There was stunned silence before his indignance mustered up a, "All the more reason to -"

"But," Hitomi interrupted gently, raising her gaze to meet his, "I am willing to see where destiny leads." She smiled softly.


	18. A Wealth of Lies, II

**Chapter 18: A Wealth of Lies, II**

Arata eyed the sun at last free from the grasp of the horizon. The weather was mutable today and the sun would only be rising into grey clouds - not knowing whether they would have rain, wind, or sun made planning ahead trickier. He did another cursory scan of the mountains and of the immediate area - Jurou's creatures had flattened most of the forest all the way down to the river, and more of them roamed Suguri. However, he was not pleased. It seemed his calculations were off.

"Lady Hitomi is late," he said.

Beside him, Jurou looked up questioningly.

"Emerging with the colony during the night or else, dawn, would have been more advantageous for her - moths are nocturnal, after all. She has already put herself at a disadvantage. And yes, the Shining Week would have begun by now. There is no reason for her to stay in that Glade." Arata tutted and stood, wandered forward a couple of paces with his arms folded. "Women. And I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, as far as her experience went."

Jurou began to scuff his feet through a pile of leaves, then began kicking the old cedar they'd determined was the vanishing point of Hitomi and the shinobi.

Arata rolled his eyes. "You are still so much a boy," he groaned.

Jurou stopped; Arata could see him pouting at him, even with the respirator. He was bored, Arata knew - didn't understand why they were waiting or rather, why they couldn't find or enter or sabotage the Glade themselves. Arata supposed he'd never really taken the time to explain to him what he knew.

"Shall I tell you something else about women, other than how they like to keep you waiting?" he asked, regaining some of his good humor.

The same could not be said for Jurou, who sat down heavily on the ground and collapsed on his back, wouldn't look at him.

"It will teach you something about this Glade, too, if you would but apply your mind." He put his hands behind his back, rocked his head from side to side to crack his neck. "There were some noblewomen - like our Lady Hitomi here - who, once upon a time, would wear incredibly elaborate, heavy robes known as junihitoe. Maybe they still do, in some places - I wouldn't know. Anyhow, as the name suggests the junihitoe was composed of twelve layers, all of varying colors and patterns - it is complex, heavy, and the combinations of the colors and patterns speak of the wearer's taste and skill. All very impressive and impenetrable."

Jurou was looking at him, now, with less skepticism and exasperation but not with the realization or even processing that Arata was hoping for.

He continued, "The Takara Glade is ultimately nothing but layers of genjutsu, like the layers of the junihitoe, with which its Moths and its Apostles have adorned themselves in order to survive. And on none other is this robe so heavy as on its Kantoku and its Sage."

* * *

Noboru held up his hand for them to stop on the ridge overlooking Suguri, though the village was hidden by forest. It lay to his right, while immediately in front of him the ridge tapered toward another on the opposite side of a gorge, through which ran a small river. He was, however, more interested in the landscape on the opposite side, which looked as though a fierce storm had ripped through it and leveled most of the forest. Indeterminable dark shapes moved over it and he could just about make out two figures, smaller than the shapes, among them, one in white.

The six samurai - only six had agreed to come with him - in his retinue stayed in the cover of the trees and shrubbery, looking too. Their horses stamped nervously, heat rising from their overworked bodies. They'd ridden hard for the past two days at his behest, barely stopping even at night. Time was too precious and he regretted only realizing it now when it came to Hitomi.

One of them - the oldest among them and his mentor since boyhood, Takuma - brought his horse alongside Noboru's and said, "Something's not right, young master."

"No," Noboru agreed.

"We shouldn't go into the village yet," said Minoru. Beside him his wife, Kyou, was dismounting her horse. "Camping here is best, if we camp at all."

Takuma dismounted too, and crept with Yuuta into the bushes close to the edge of the ridge, peering down into the village. After a few moments in which nothing but the grumble of the horses and insects could be heard, they stood slowly and returned to the group. "There are creatures down there, black as tar. The villagers aren't visible," he said. "A shinobi of some kind, maybe. Though I don't think it's the kind from the Leaf." As though sensing the resurgence of Noboru's perpetual question, he added, "No sign of Lady Hitomi either."

Noboru frowned, then released it. His facial muscles hurt and he realized he'd been frowning to one degree or another since they'd left. He refused to give in to despair after they'd come so far, despite having questioned the wisdom of his decisions plenty of times. He glanced at Takuma out of the corner of his eye, willed reassurance to be given to him.

Takuma looked as though he were considering what to say - but he did at least seem to recognize Noboru's thoughts. "If…" he closed his misshapen mouth; the scar there turned pale as he chewed on his lip. Then he brought his eyes up to Noboru's. "Young master, we will not think less of you."

Noboru searched his eyes as he processed this. After a moment he answered, "You want to protect me, I know. But she will be my wife. If I fail her now, I fail myself."

* * *

Arata turned at the sudden burst of chakra behind him, like a hole in a dam. Several meters away was a rip of green-gold in the sky and four matching lightning bolts sprang out of it and hit the demolished forest. A gale pummeled them, shredding the light away into nothing, and Arata and Jurou were faced with not one Hitomi, not one Hitomi and three shinobi, but four Hitomis. What he did expect, at least, was the impassive look on their faces. The bright haori was worn on their right shoulder only, revealing a long black fingerless glove on the left arm that rested laxly on the hilt of the katana on the right hip.

 _Their chakra appears identical - we can assume clones of a kind, then,_ Arata assessed. _Until proven otherwise. Her chakra has increased, that's for certain, but it does not match that of other Sages I've encountered - we can also assume, then, that she is not currently in Sage mode proper. And judging by the distance away she chose to reappear, she will likely be long-range - the pacifism of the Takara Glade doesn't lend itself to close-range even if put aside for defense purposes._

Jurou stepped up beside him, glanced up at him then back at their adversary. He pulled down his goggles from his dirty hair.

"Welcome back, Lady Hitomi," Arata cast his voice into the wind. "Judging by your finery, I'm glad the metamorphosis went well. A truly Radiant Silk Sage. Though I'm surprised not to see your Kantoku with you." He wondered if the Kantoku was hidden somewhere along with the rest of the colony, or whether they were still in the Glade. Typically neither would leave the Glade - if there was a danger the Apostles and Sage would see to it, but if they were lacking in the former then the Kantoku should have no choice. _Something's happened, then,_ he thought.

The four clones spoke in unison. "You should leave."

Arata chuckled once. "Oh no, not without you, I'm afraid."

Three of the clones vanished - a gradual fading into their surroundings rather than the normal puff of smoke - leaving the second from the left. Arata sank into a ready stance; Jurou quickly copied him back to back. He glanced around them repeatedly without moving his head. He couldn't detect the clones. Maybe they'd truly vanished in an untraditional fashion. Owing to what he knew of the Moths, however, he was inclined to believe the opposite.

"Jurou," he said lowly. "Remember what I told you. Their camouflage is second to none."

The one visible Hitomi slowly drew her blade, sank into her own stance with it held horizontally in front of her. Then, behind her, further clones stepped out of her silhouette, only half-visible, and flowed out either side of her with katanas of their own to encircle the two of them.

 _The only way to tell if they are mirages is to strike._ He drew his sickles. "Jurou. Focus on the copies. Call your pets." he said. He kept his eyes on the original.

The carbons, as he'd come to think of them, skittered over the terrain and in turn encircled Hitomi's half-there clones, outnumbering them two to one. Neither the original or the copies moved, though he could see the original frowning as she observed the new odds.

"This will not go well for you, whatever tricks you may have." He paused. "Let me make this...easier for you. Either you come with me, or the village in the gorge below and all the people in it will be destroyed. Your life, or that of hundreds of innocents." When she seemed uncertain, he added, "No doubt you can sense more of the carbons, and the other kekkai genkai user."

A few moments passed. The original - or what he thought was the original - shimmered and stepped forward, leaving a ghost behind it that vanished.

 _Something to do with the colony, perhaps, such as armor. More than likely another kind of genjutsu cast on us. That makes four times that an image of her has vanished completely._

He was surprised by Hitomi sheathing her sword. "This does not concern them," she said, echoing her sentiment from a few days ago when she'd tried to move their initial fight out of the streets.

"You're correct. And I'd like to avoid collateral damage," he said. "Disarm."

"Very well." She walked toward him, staking her katana into the ground.

Arata knew better. But it didn't stop him from hoping for the best. He sheathed one sickle, held out the now free hand. Oddly, she held out her hands too, as if expecting to be cuffed - which was what he had in mind, in fact. This more than anything quashed his hope. Nonetheless he pretended as if nothing was wrong.

He thought back to his conversation with Jurou, what he didn't tell him. _After all, the only way to get through these endless veils of genjutsu is to rip them open._

Arata wrapped his large hand easily around both of her small wrists. They were cold, but this was not what told him what he suspected all along. He could feel the difference in chakra now that he was touching it, however slight. It shifted like scales under his palms, and he stifled that minute movement by forcing salt to seep from them, encompassing her wrists.

He looked her dead in the eye. "Lies, lies, _lies_ ," he said, baring his teeth.

The copy exploded, losing the shape of a human being and instead becoming two dog-sized brown and green moths that soared away from his touch. Chunks of salt fell off violet chakra armor sheathing their bodies.

"Jurou!" Arata signaled.

The boy in turn signaled one of the carbons closest to the edge of the ridge - how, Arata remained unsure - and it ran down out of sight. Only a moment later and the sound of earth and timber cracking and collapsing sailed up into the air, carried on dust clouds, villagers' screams and flurries of snow on a bitterly cold wind. The screaming continued, and though many of the clones looked in Suguri's direction, none moved.

A new Hitomi image was before Arata, now, despite having released one genjutsu. The moths fluttered high above it. Of course he still had no way of knowing if it was yet more moth-clones or Hitomi herself, but he spoke to it anyway. "You never intended to keep them safe. Not really." He smiled in appreciation - it was interesting, truly. "But you have gained nothing by their slaughter."

The clone picked up the staked katana. Arata drew his second sickle. When the clone lunged for him, though the close-range combat that ensued surprised him he couldn't help being grateful for it. He even refrained from using his jutsu to creep from his blades to hers - not that she was keeping them in contact long enough to facilitate it. It was invigorating; he'd trained much of his life to be as much of a hunter as a collector, and for that one needed stamina to match the best prey, of which a Sage would be one.

There was, however, a problem: this was not the Sage.

Arata dodged a swipe, put distance between them. Only a minute or two of fighting this one and assessing its movements had been needed to figure it out. Though he kept his eyes on it as it ran for him again, he turned his head and called, "You can disguise another shinobi all you like, Lady Hitomi, but you cannot disguise their fighting style!"

He dodged another swipe; the disguised shinobi flinched at being called-out, but the disguise did not dissipate.

"You _will_ show yourself," he said, noting the light rain that was beginning to fall - perfect. "If not to save a village, to save your Glade."


	19. Radiance

**Chapter 19: Radiance**

Noboru and his retinue paused their horses by Suguri's gate; the ground had been ruptured by thick veins and walls of bluish ice that had broken the buildings into firewood, felled trees, and prompted landslides. There were bodies in what remained of the road that were not moving, and the black creatures that they had seen from the ridge appeared to have vanished. Even the horses seemed to fall quiet - the cold wind tore at the two tall _sashimono_ behind Yuuta and Shinjiru, that Takuma had insisted they bring despite the fact there would be no mistaking them for an enemy - 'to revive Lady Hitomi's spirits', he'd said. Their breath and that of the horses fogged in the air, through which fell a light rain growing steadier. Noboru happened to glance at the bronze-gold of his brace and saw frost blooming on it, which he hadn't seen since they left the Land of Iron.

"Jutsu," Takuma said. His hands clenched hard around his reins.

As Noboru debated whether to enter and help the villagers, Aoi focused their attention. "The river," he said.

They shifted their horses to see it better. Fingers of frost had crept outward from the bank and the water was sluggish, undulating in place rather than flowing. As they watched, it began to swell in places and then rise. It was icy slush rather than water.

"There," Aoi said again and pointed.

Noboru squinted - Aoi's vision was probably better than even his own - but eventually saw the gray-wrapped figure climbing the steep hill on the opposite side of the river. A few paces ahead, making much easier progress, were two of the black creatures.

"The jutsu-user, then," grumbled Shinjiru.

"We'll head up then, too," Noboru reluctantly decided as he tore his eyes away from the village. "Whatever the ice-user is doing to the river, it can't be good news for Lady Hitomi. We will intercept."

They tied their horses to a fallen tree on account of the slope being too steep, and pursued on foot.

* * *

Hitomi kept her breathing even, using this simplest of movements to keep her chakra flowing toward its several destinations: the first, to keep herself, Neji, and Lee camouflaged; the second, to keep Tenten in disguise; the third, to keep her moths armored and perceiving night rather than day; the fourth, to keep her other clones intact; and fifth and most of all, to keep imbuing her surroundings with chakra. This latter task was in preparation for her Sage mode proper, as it would help her perform transformations of natural materials more efficiently, but most of all, it would help her perceive her surroundings when her vision and hearing stopped again. She likened it to hanging an ink-soaked brush in water - her chakra seeped outward and saturated the previously-dull colors with green-gold. She did this sitting on the ground in front of the rip they'd made in the gate to the Glade, having never truly moved since their arrival.

Like her grandfather moving the tokens that represented his battalions on the battle board, she analyzed the situation and prepared to take preemptive measures. She reached out with her mind to two of the moths, "Go to Lee and Neji - steer them to the boy and have them take care of him. The less of those carbon-creatures we have to worry about, the better." They bothered her in particular because as far as she could tell, she could not imbue them with chakra and their own remained hard to detect - a sort of worrisome half-life between a natural material and a living thing.

She watched Arata dodged one of Tenten's swipes, and put distance back between them. Tenten ran for him again, but he turned his head - to where he maybe thought Hitomi was - and called over his shoulder, "You can disguise another shinobi all you like, Lady Hitomi, but you cannot disguise their fighting style!"

He dodged another swipe; Hitomi saw Tenten flinch but she did not release the disguise - not yet.

"You _will_ show yourself," he continued. "If not to save a village, to save your Glade."

Hitomi was about to ignore Arata's goading, preoccupied with taking note of the rain that was beginning and trying to figure it into her plans, when she noticed that the source of the ice jutsu she'd felt earlier was materializing out of the haze of the gorge and coming uphill. Simultaneously, Arata's yellow-white chakra was beginning to seep from him like spores and meld with the rain.

 _Is he trying to make the rain caustic? That seems ineffective. What -_

Her attention was taken by something new: following the ice-user were seven more flames of chakra. One of whom she knew as well as her own - unmistakably Noboru. She allowed herself a smile. _They came for me._ She saw two of them rush ahead to try to flank and cut the ice-user off, katana drawn. Attached to their backs were two stark white _sashimono_ with their black Maeda five-petaled plum blossom crest waving wildly. One was dressed in emerald green armor, the other in bronze. Arata was still occupied by Tenten and didn't appear to notice or care about their arrival.

Then, behind them, beyond the ridge - a sparkling silver wave rose slowly into the air like the back of some mighty hand. It was immense. Hitomi's smile dropped; she picked out the tendrils of chakra of the ice-user's chakra webbed through it, combining with Arata's chakra and reaching out to the rain, too.

 _The river…_

Her attention was jerked away by Tenten crying out - by the way she was stumbling, Arata had struck her in the face. He pulled a bloody thumb away from his mouth and used it to pin down a small scroll to the ground. There was the flash of a summoning that rippled through the slushy water and rain.

A russet and dusky pink jellyfish the size of a pagoda appeared in the water, which was now glowing pale yellow with chakra. From what she could discern, the water was completely fluid inside but held together and aloft by a veneer of icy slush. Before she could assess it further its long, thin tentacles burst through the bubble and struck out at her clones at the same time as the carbon-creatures lunged forward.

 _I won't have enough time!_ Hitomi realized. _I'll have to deprive it of its water._ She was glad she'd discussed with the others that she'd eventually have to drop their disguises and camouflage, but didn't think she'd have to do so yet. Arata had forced her hand. Like snapping a thread with her teeth, she severed her chakra connection with the disguises over the shinobi and made her hand signs to enter Sage mode - the work she'd done would have to be enough.

As her vision and hearing of the physical world faded into the one of chakra she'd created - and as her body, conversely, became visible again - she heard Arata say, "That's it, show me your true form."

 _You have ten minutes,_ she told herself, and took a deep breath.

* * *

Neji braced himself as his camouflage dissipated. A nearby carbon-creature on its way to the ring of clones noticed and immediately reeled, jabbing an extremely long talon at him. He dodged, dealt a series of blunt strikes that shattered what he guessed was one of its hips. Another kick sent it toppling into shards.

 _This is earlier than we'd planned,_ he thought. The rain, which was growing heavier, made his skin itch and led him to think that Arata was imbuing it with salt. He eyed the giant jellyfish that had erupted into being inside the equally-huge, incongruous sphere of slush-encased water to his right. _Can't be helped._ His gaze panned left, past Arata and Tenten, to where they'd emerged from the Glade.

The air several feet off the ground was shredding itself and revealing Hitomi, standing against a gleaming, rotating circle of green-gold chakra hovering behind her like the top of a throne, as regal as when she'd first emerged from stasis. Only this time, four additional arms were raised alongside her original two, and - more crucially - her chakra had increased fourfold. He dreaded to think what it would have been had there been more time. Arata was laughing triumphantly even as her chakra spat out of this circle to deflect the jellyfish's tentacles.

Neji began running. _I know she told Lee and I to worry about the boy, but we have to help her take down this summon, otherwise she'll expend all of her energy on it and there won't be anything left for the others. The best way to do that is to take down the ice-user._ He clashed with another pair of the carbon-creatures.

Between them, he was finally able to see the seven new arrivals that he had detected earlier through the mess of chakra on the ridge: seven samurai from the Land of Iron - one of whom was using chakra-infused bow and arrows rather than a sword - that were moving as a surprisingly cohesive unit as they took on the ice-user. Two were in crimson armor, one in emerald, one in bronze, one in black, and another in silver and white, while the archer was in a vivid blue and gold. He did not recognize their crest as belonging to Lord Mifune, but they seemed remarkably prepared for the task at hand.

The ice-user was a stout, middle-aged woman with lank, graying brown hair who looked more tired than vicious. A gray shawl was wrapped around her shoulders and secured at her chest with a brooch; one arm was directing her chakra upward at the jellyfish, while her other hand was generating scales of ice to either fire at the samurai or shield her from their blows - despite her tired face her body did not seem to be struggling with her task. Neji wondered where they'd managed to find an ice-user at all, not that it mattered.

Abruptly, the boy was in front of him, his face barely recognizable as such because of the respirator and goggles he wore. A skeletal carbon-creature was wrapped over him, giving him additional limbs as though he'd been inspired by Hitomi. Neji would have laughed had the kid not struck out at him repeatedly at a nearly invisible rate, forcing him back.

* * *

Arata gave the female shinobi a deep swipe with his sickle through her shoulder as he dodged her defensive strike with her naginata. She stumbled; a pair of pale yellow moths soared in front of her, their wings shivering - he saw the senbon emerge from them and a second later, threw up a salt wall to protect himself. Three carbons pincered in from the other side, followed in turn by the taijutsu user. For added fun, Arata raised four more salt walls to box in the chaos, and turned away.

Chikako was doing well, surprisingly - the samurai were having trouble dealing with her. Arata had been skeptical over assurances that she would hold up her end of the bargain and aid them. Indeed he hadn't been impressed by her at all and would have sent the widow home had he not spotted the bitter streak in her. While he wasn't sure what his benefactor had promised her, her ability was crucial to his success on this ridge.

He turned, then, to the Radiant Silk Sage - Lady Hitomi, hovering like a deity at least a dozen meters from him and maybe ten off the ground, a picture of composure. He adjusted his grip on his sickles and stalked forward. She did not react, seemingly focused on his summon, Shinju. The great jellyfish from the Kanashii Sea surrounding his home island was on the defense as the Sage struck out at her, presumably trying to rob her of her saltwater. Arata was interested to see that the Sage was shivering on the spot, which was almost indiscernible at this distance but became more obvious as he approached. As he grew closer he could also pick out that one of her eyes was completely white, the other completely black.

 _Tales of blindness and deafness might be true, then,_ he thought. To test this, he swung one sickle upward and stabbed it into the ground, sending a spike of salt up at her.

To his delight, one of her arms shot out just as fast and, palm glowing, halted it less than a foot from her by transforming it into dirt that crumbled steadily downward, much as he pressed. While two of her other hands appeared to be keeping her wheel of chakra moving to address and bypass Shinju's poisonous tentacles and another two released a stream of her chakra toward the saltwater, at last she turned her head to look down at him. Her sixth hand drew her katana.

 _She's long-range after all,_ Arata noted with satisfaction and plucked his sickle out of the ground. _The katana is only for defense if I make it up there._

He was startled when she held out the katana vertically and dropped it. Recognizing the chakra charged within it, he was leaping just before it staked into the ground - but not quickly enough. A web of chakra exploded over the ground from the sword and the dirt from his salt, and at least a dozen swords thrust upwards at him. One speared his calf.

Arata landed on the spike he'd created earlier and bolstered it with chakra. He ran at her, even as the air around him began to glow. The rain he'd been imbuing with salt was evaporating as her chakra overpowered his, creating a dangerous mist. He held his breath.

 _She can't -_

The mist sizzled, evaporated completely with a _pop_ and a sudden hot gush outward. It gushed into the resulting vacuum as fire.

Arata barely dodged, but kept moving. _I have to destabilize her, otherwise she'll wreck Shinju's water shell. First though, to figure out why she's moving like that._ More swords erupted from the ground and kept him dodging.

 _Arata,_ came the calm - almost bored - voice of Shinju in his head, _your suspicions were correct: the Glade is disguised by genjutsu several layers deep and both this Sage and all humans outside it cannot see it. The Kantoku remains inside. We are battling over the top of it._

 _How do we rip it open?_

 _Such words…_ Shinju noted but he couldn't tell the emotion attached to them. _There is a thread that connects Sage and Kantoku still - sever it and the Kantoku will emerge, and she will not have the strength to uphold the genjutsu over the Glade. It will collapse. Such a thing will also likely weaken the concentration of the Sage. Stop her movement and her chakra control will be less fluid. These two things will help you achieve victory._

 _I can't sever something I can't see,_ Arata said and jerked to a halt as a cluster of swords appeared in front of him, nearly skewering his eye.

 _I will do it. After all, is that not why I'm here? I will leave you when it is done, and you shall have your saltmarsh. Be prepared._

Arata smiled to himself. He couldn't wait. _Thank you, Shinju. I'll distract her._

He sprung up behind Lady Hitomi. She did not turn but he wouldn't be complacent. He crossed his sickles.

* * *

 **A Note from the Author:** Firstly, thank you for your patience with updates and thank you for reading/reviewing! Secondly, I hope you don't mind that I took some liberties with the armor of the samurai (as well as the horses for travel and Noboru's bow and arrows), which I felt were a missed opportunity in the anime.


	20. Rip

**A Note from the Author: Thank you for your patience with updates, everyone!**

* * *

Chapter 20: Rip

 _Six minutes,_ Hitomi estimated.

She sensed Arata spring up behind her and the chakra gathering at the cross-point of his twin sickles. It was leaking into a vertical line, which then burst open into a flat sheet that jumped forward at her. Hitomi turned side-on and in a flash her chakra sliced through the sheet of half-formed salt and rose again to block any counters. Gravity was beginning to pull Arata downward.

The larger pieces of the salt-sheet abruptly took on life of their own and flung themselves at her, adhering to her body and starting to grow over it in an effort to join together. Arata surprised her by throwing a sickle at her. Enraged, her chakra massed at the designated impact point and lashed out, seizing it. She realized her mistake when Arata's own pulsed in the sickle, causing an explosion of salt. Before it completely enclosed her in a new flat plane, she saw Arata throw his second sickle to knock the first one loose, which he caught in his descent. She was falling now, too.

 _How dare you, how dare you…_

"Hitomi!" she heard Noboru shout. He was closer than she'd realized, not that she could move.

She felt her control over her chakra waver, gutter. The longer she remained still, the worse it would get. The salt prism was eating at her skin; it struck the ground with a bone-shuddering thud but did not shatter. Arata stood in front of her grinning, while behind him the huge jellyfish Summon, free of Hitomi's pestering, seemed to be moving - she felt its chakra reaching out beyond the confines of the bubble, searching.

First one arrow then another whizzed by Arata and struck the salt prism. One merely chipped at the surface but the other stuck into it next to her right shoulder; a third split the second down the shaft, gauging deeper, creating a crack that Noboru's chakra diffused into.

 _Noboru._ Another crack opened in her chest, releasing a wave of nostalgia, guilt, and desperation. She wanted to see his face. His actual face - however accomplished her view of chakra it would never show the little scar on his chin, the lines of his frown.

His chakra, a sizzling ice-blue and gold, was singing to her - reminding her who she was, reminding her that others were risking their lives for her, tearing down all of her grand designs into the pure need to get out of here alive. Hitomi tried to focus her own in its direction, through all of the minute lattices that tried to keep them from one another. A fourth arrow struck near the third.

Arata had turned his attention to Noboru now, but the older man had an injured leg and Noboru was still a fair distance away - she had to hurry. A fifth arrow. A sixth. All in the same vicinity. She remembered their games in the field, terrifying their attendants, where she would hold out something in her hand for him to try to pierce - how many sleeves ruined, how many untamed sparks of chakra spitting from the arrowheads and scarring her wrists.

 _You've gotten so much better, Nobu,_ Hitomi thought.

An eighth impacted, but after that no more came and she could see he was at last out. Hitomi pushed at the weak point as hard as she could until finally her chakra met Noboru's and the crack extended from top to bottom. The prism burst. She ran, grabbing her katana on the way, and cut Arata off before he could reach her childhood friend. One of the carbon-creatures had Noboru on the defensive with his short katana - it was up to Hitomi to block Arata's sickle-swipe with her own long arc, which she followed swiftly with a sharp re-curve and stab downward into his shoulder as she spun, entering his circle. Two of her hands seized his wrists while another two drove the katana downward; Arata sputtered blood but it looked more like a laugh.

Hitomi was already releasing her grip and turning when his pupils crackled into salt. The clone burst. The real Arata descended from above, landing on her. They both toppled and began a graceless struggle on the ground. Hitomi knew this wasn't what she should be wasting her time on but felt frenzied, desperate, and like she'd forgotten everything she'd learnt. It was made worse when Arata, easily double to three times her size, managed to pin her beneath him.

"Stay still, Radiant One," he sneered. "Just a little longer."

Something played at the periphery of her chakra-senses, like a loose thread in a breeze. Then, the thread began to unravel. But what was it that was unraveling?

Hitomi fought to concentrate. She focused on the pressing, the weight, the gravity. The space between them glowed. Gradually the force of gravity began to lighten, lift, and shift into the smallest of momentums. Hitomi heaved upward with what felt like sheer force of will, and Arata lifted off her by an inch. She freed one hand, stretched, grabbed her katana and heaved upward even more with a scream. As their positions reversed, she stabbed the katana into his chest.

"Too late," said Arata.

She didn't relinquish her grip, but turned to look at the source of the unraveling she'd felt earlier. To her horror the Summon had a tentacle around what looked like another made of light, flailing in the wind, around where they'd emerged from the Glade. The Summon pulled and kept pulling, and the sky was ripped asunder. Hitomi felt something at her core snap; something flashed over her vision once, twice, several times.

Like spilled water dripping off a table, first what she knew to be the Glade came leaking over into the real world. Then, the real world mottled and became a different version of the Glade - something stripped to its bones, ashen-looking and distorted. There were skeletons beside her. Her chakra struggled to know where to attempt to replenish from, where to anchor itself for substitutions and transformations - it was like a sudden fever and she felt weak in the knees. Her vision and hearing tried to return in patches, as though through murky water. The spill from the rip spread farther to encompass the entire ridge and only Arata seemed unsurprised.

 _What…_ Hitomi thought in despair.

Then Ku, suddenly very close. Pieces of carbon-creature shattered over Hitomi and her head turned wildly. A blade-like leg headed for her back fell to one side. Ku's great wings filled her vision. Arata backhanded her and wrestled free, pulling the katana out with his bare hand and swinging it at Ku. The moth screeched - a rapidly-rippling wave of chakra disturbance soaring outward - and blocked and latched onto the blade with one horned foot.

" _The sickles, Hitomi,"_ Ku ordered in her head. She ripped the blade from Arata's hand with surprising strength.

Hitomi grabbed them.

" _Destroy them just as he'd destroyed our home."_ She was bearing down on Arata, her far larger weight easily pushing him underneath first one leg and then two like a paper doll. No longer was she the clean soft white, but a dirty parchment color and ragged-looking, missing part of one of her back legs and half of an antennae - more of a creature from a nightmare.

"Ku -"

" _The genjutsu has collapsed - there's no time to explain. Destroy the sickles!"_

"Jurou! Crack the ridge!" Arata yelled.

A few seconds passed. The carbon creatures let out a simultaneous, gleeful call and the ground underneath Hitomi trembled. There were whispers and hisses underfoot, followed by a haze she couldn't quite see released into the air - but she smelt the graphite, nearly choked on it. Hitomi wobbled as the ground became abruptly soft. Then it cracked with a deep sound Hitomi knew she'd remembered forever. Some distance away the bubble that held the Summon flickered, dissipated, and the great jellyfish itself paled and lost shape until it was gone. With an almighty slosh all of the water fell on the ridge, sweeping everyone off their feet into a maelstrom.

Hitomi was bashed around a little and lost her grip on the sickles, and cursed to herself. She was pummeled into Ku's great spindly body and they were both pulled into a vicious current until Ku anchored them. Ku's body felt like it was shrinking. Pieces of the Glade she knew - or thought she knew - swept by: lantern lids, floorboards, a latticed door of the nursery, broken hachimitsu vines with fat spoiled orbs of fruit. She saw it all with blurry eyes, while the roar of crumbling stone and rushing water that she knew should be deafening was merely a low rumble. She was failing.

 _I was never going to be ready for this. What have I done?_ She watched it all swirl past her as though in a dream. _I've destroyed what I fought to save._

The saltwater soaked into the dust and deeper, churned by some invisible hand. It began to burn.

" _Higher ground!"_ Ku commanded.

Hitomi turned, only to find herself staring back at her. She blinked. Had she always looked like that?

" _It will help us,"_ she - Ku - said by way of explanation.

Hitomi looked around wildly, squinting her inner eye at all of the rushing and muddied nuances of chakra to try to make sense of things, while she and the disguised Ku clambered onto a sizzling lump of harder rock. Tiredness was seeping into her along with the dehydration. The tang of salt grew ever more potent and with it, the sound of Arata laughing not too far away.

" _Focus,"_ Ku said. _"We are not done yet."_

 _How much time do I have left? How much time?_

* * *

Neji grimaced as he pulled himself up the ancient cedar beside what was once the gate to the Takara Glade. From what he could see, the entire ridge was becoming a saltmarsh of sorts, halted at the very edges. Though at first it appeared like the edges were rising, he realized that in fact it was the marsh and its contents that were gradually sinking as the sludge became ever hungrier, ever more caustic. Every combatant had been dispersed; the samurai were struggling in the middle, vaguely separate from one another; the archer was being pulled up on the edge by Tenten; Lee was opposite them, pulling himself up on the other edge; the ice-user struggled below him, while the kid he'd been fighting was wading to an island created by another trembling treetop.

That left Hitomi at the center, with Arata not too far away. The cursed sickles were staked in the ground and almost blinding with chakra as they poured what Neji could only guess was more salt into the mire.

 _I'm closest,_ he thought. _I can get to her._ Even as he thought it the samurai were trying to regroup and head her way; he heard the archer call her name.

Hitomi seemed to step out of her own shadow and Neji realized he was looking at two of them. He couldn't tell them apart, Byakugan or not.

"Ku," he uttered, remembering the surreal sight of the skeletal moth being pulled through the rip in the sky by the Summon.

One of the Hitomis leapt toward Arata. The other was putting her additional hands to use and weaving three hand signs at once.

Neji jolted as the ground collapsed again, and he kept falling. Saltwater and debris and sludge fell with him until abruptly he was halted, while the rest of it kept going. Something was pressed against him, keeping him in midair.

Some several yards below him the mess finally reached a stopping point; a glance around him told him they were in an immense cavern created where the cliff had been. He could still hear Arata laughing, but the ice-user's wail soared over it and strangled into pain before being silenced. He strained, and found her floating face-down on the mire's surface. It wasn't long before the mire began to eat at her clothes and flesh, slowly turning them black and dissolving them.

 _Hitomi,_ he thought, his search becoming more frantic. The six samurai were crawling onto tiny islands of bedrock imbued with Sage chakra and stripping off sizzling armor - the kid was clinging to a niche in the cavern's side. Everyone's chakra was suffering from the mire, but surely hers -

He found her directly below him, forcing herself to her feet, one arm raised above her and her face turned up to his. He could swear she was smiling. Chakra tunneled upward out of her palm, keeping him aloft. But was it her or was it Ku?

The second Hitomi was hopping from dissolving island to dissolving island along with Arata, the two of them reduced to hand-to-hand combat with an occasional flare of chakra. Even with a chest wound Arata was only just managing to keep up with the four extra arms, but Neji wasn't sure how long it'd last. The thought had barely concluded when Arata got lucky; the one sickle he had left raked through Hitomi's chest. She called out and Arata hooked her legs out from under her. Hitomi, however, grabbed him with all six arms and held fast, bringing him with her into the collapse. They struggled as the mire began to eat at them, but Hitomi seemed intent to drag Arata away from shore. As Neji watched in horror, the disguise began to fracture and flake away, Hitomi's body growing, distorting and paling into that of Ku.

"Jurou!" Arata bellowed. "She cannot sense the carbon! Kill her, now!"

Neji located the kid that could only be Jurou. His mask was down, his goggles up, his face distressed and on the verge of a teary scream at Arata.

"Do it! Avenge me!" Arata commanded. Ku dragged him under.

Jurou raised a shaking arm. Two carbons leapt from the sides of the cavern, splintering and reforming into spears.

Neji's heart clenched tight. "Hitomi! Let me fall!" He begged her to hear him, but no matter how many times he shouted, struggled, her grip was tight, her blind eyes unblinking. He likely wouldn't survive it, but he was willing to take that chance. "Let me fall!" He felt the plea in his bones, riddling them, trying to rip out of him along with all those unnamed dreams glimpsed in the cave and back further still, before he'd ever met her.

The spears struck her through the back and side; her step faltered, as did the grip on Neji. He fell a couple of feet before she righted them both. She screamed in anger, throwing up her remaining arms to help. He could feel the air and chakra around him changing - he was moving slowly left - he saw a ledge - but not only was her Sage mode dying, the island beneath her was crumbling and sinking.

Another wordless yell and Hitomi threw him with the last of her strength at the ledge; Neji threw his bodyweight into the momentum and caught it with a hand, hauled himself up. He turned and saw another spear shoot through the air toward her, wobble, and fall short. The kid tried again but he was at his limit. Hitomi sliced the fourth spear with her katana and collapsed on her hands and knees, breathing heavily, and ripped out the other two. Her flame was guttering out.

"Hitomi!" Neji yelled across the mire. "Don't give up! Come to me!"

She sank ever more awkwardly downward, though she tried to prop herself up with the katana. Her head rose to look in his direction. Her additional arms vanished, her eyes went back to green - the only green thing in this hell - even as they closed.

"Hitomi!" he yelled, his breath ragged. He searched for a way down and across, but there was barely anything solid left.

"Samurai! Fulfil your duty! Get her to our lord!"

The samurai closest to her, an older man in white, ran over the mire to her side, yelling too for courage, scooped her up, and began running to another on a disappearing foothold. One in red took her and kept running in the same fashion toward the one in black, even as the one in white stumbled and sank screaming into the mire. Neji watched in further horror as this self-sacrificing chain continued.

 _They're getting her to shore,_ he realized. The one in blue was still on the edge, waiting for her.

Neji climbed upward as quickly and safely as he could, and once he reached the rim despite his thirst and aching muscles he began to run. He tried to keep her in sight through the twisted trees wilting in the briny air. She was almost across - would they make it? He wasn't sure what he'd do if they didn't.

His hand dug into the needle tacked in his sleeve. _Please._

But this was swiftly followed with, _She is a mission. A failing mission -_

 _\- She can come back to the Leaf -_

 _\- "And what would I do there?" -_

 _\- I should have said -_

 _\- Nothing, there's nothing to say -_

 _\- She will not -_

 _\- If she lives -_

 _\- She has to live -_

 _\- For the mission -_

 _\- For me - she should come back to me -_

 _\- Not for you -_

 _\- She cannot die for me -_

 _\- If she does you will have sinned beyond anything -_

 _\- Don't flatter yourself -_

 _\- She will live. She has to live. She's going to come back. She's going to be just Hitomi. Not a Sage, not a general's daughter, not a pawn, not a wife. -_

 _\- Not a wife? -_

 _\- If there's a chance -_

 _\- Let me see if she's my chance and I'm hers. -_

Neji had reached the final curve. He was distantly aware that Lee had fallen into step behind him and was firing one question after another. He thought he could make out Tenten with the samurai in blue -

 _\- Her intended. Her fiance. -_

 _\- No -_

\- and the last samurai in red collapsed at his feet - a woman, Neji realized. Tenten was supporting Hitomi while the samurai and the archer exchanged a few tense words before her head fell to the scree. He and Tenten began to climb; Neji and Lee rushed to help them.

Neji moved to Hitomi, to return her weight to his back where he felt it belonged, but the archer was already there. He didn't seem to know how to carry her at first but eventually had her on his back too. Hitomi had one eye lazily open, looking at him. She was smiling.

 _How can she be smiling? How can she be smiling at me?_

No one spoke while they struggled down the slope toward what remained of the river and Suguri. Neji thought he saw the kid, Jurou, stumbling into pristine forest but it could have easily been a shadow.


	21. Wrestling with Illusions

**Chapter 21: Wrestling with Illusions**

" _You're here, Ku," Hitomi had said, though it was half-questioning._

 _"Even if that Summon had not pulled me outside of our Glade, I was on my way to you. I am sorry for everything," Ku replied._

 _Hitomi had stifled all of the other questions and panics clamoring at her. "I'm sor-"_

 _"No, you've no need to be. I have doomed us all. I have failed in raising you. I was selfish, and now we all have suffered for it. I did not want to spend my final years - final days, hours, minutes - alone. Yet I also did not want, in the end, to spend them without dropping all illusions for once."_

 _"The genjutsu."_

 _"So many - and we can both see clearly now - but also the simplest one: I did not want to die under the pall of my pride, and not tell you I was sorry - that I did love you, though I was poor at it."_

 _"Ku…"_

 _"You must live, and go home. Your dream, of that shinobi - he was taking you home, remember? Just as I tore you from there I was torn from mine, which is a fitting end. I cannot live long out here. Let me spend my time well."_

 _"You've already spent your time well!"_

 _"Not yet - not until you achieve your dream."_

* * *

Hitomi awoke to pressure on her ribs, the sting of something cool and wet on the stab wounds in her left side and back, the rub of gauze. She was lying on her right side in grass, her hand grazing a tree root, and there was the sound of rain. She recognized Tenten's knees and Noboru's still-gauntleted hands as they worked on her but didn't have the strength to raise her eyes to see more.

 _The Summon ripped Ku out of the Glade...I suppose it doesn't matter how,_ she thought. _The genjutsu - all of them - collapsed: Ku's one over me, mine over her, ours over the shinobi, the Glade's over us and the colony, the colony's strengthening of that of the Glade, the Kantoku's over the Sage…_

It made her head hurt to recognize all of the tightly-wound lies. Just what about the past two years had been real, exactly, if the Glade had already been a graveyard and if Ku had been brainwashing her both as mother to daughter and Kantoku to Sage? She had suspected it, but had wanted that twisted love to be real… She had gone along with it, in the end. It made her heart hurt to admit to having perpetuated those lies; although not the most honest of people growing up, the extent of her deceptions - however protective - was difficult to swallow. Particularly now that so much had been lost.

 _Nobu's retainers, and my colony…_ Her muscles ached. She tried sensing them - were all the colony dead? _Was it even worth it in the end? What am I, now? What will I be, if I live?_ Before she slipped back into unconsciousness she felt someone take her hand.

* * *

There had been nothing to be found in the remains of Suguri - the horses had been slaughtered and the water was spoilt, so Neji had taken them through the gorge to follow the river upstream in the direction of the border. Like a lodestone was hidden somewhere in his body, he wanted to turn southeast, for home, and hadn't fully made up his mind whether to do so.

However, eventually Tenten had broken the group's anxious silence with a shrill demand to stop and administer emergency first aid to Hitomi, followed by a mumbled comment that they couldn't just keep running and hope the injuries would disappear. Not to mention that the salt had drained everyone, including Lee. So Neji stopped them. It still felt like he was running - like he would forever be running - and he could see it in the others, too. He'd never had a mission go this disastrously - not since the failed Sasuke retrieval, that is - and so far outside what they had expected, and was admittedly shaken by it. No amount of plunging his face into the river and alternately taking huge gulps of it and screaming into it was helping.

He'd stopped them in what was a truer glade than the Takara Glade had ever been, in what he guessed was just inside the Land of Waterfalls. Although Tenten had supplies, as ever, to administer basic first aid he knew they needed to get to a major town or city quickly, where there was a likelier chance of finding a medical-nin. He could tell by the way Tenten's eyes creased and the uncommonly nervous way her hands moved that she was reliving past regrets and feelings of inadequacy regarding that abandoned path, but didn't have the strength himself to encourage her.

The lodestone in him tugged southeast, again. _Do they even have medical-nin in Iron, if they have no traditional shinobi? That's a reason as any to go to the Leaf -_

Neji came out of the whirlwind of his thoughts when someone knelt nearby. He remembered he was still on the riverbank under the cover of broad-leafed trees, his hands still pushing into the smooth gray pebbles of the shallows. He let go of them and with them, the obscure desire to shove them down his throat. It was the archer, next to him. Hitomi's intended; he stared out over the river to the opposite shore, squinting not to see something, but in pain. His dark eyes were set into a young-looking, kind face with a surprising tan for someone from the north; most of his brilliant cobalt and gold armor was gone, leaving him in the ripped navy linen under-robes, and his hair was coming loose from the knot at the back of his head. Though it was a cruel thought and inappropriate for the occasion besides, Neji was scarcely impressed and wondered what there was to recommend him to a General's granddaughter much less Hitomi. He seemed soft by comparison.

"My name's Maeda Noboru. I'm sorry I didn't offer it earlier," the archer said quietly.

Neji looked away. "There were other things to focus on." He paused. "Hyuga Neji, of the Leaf - my team are Rock Lee and Tenten." Another pause. "I'm sorry about the loss of your men." Sorry, too, about the botched nature of all of it, but he couldn't speak it yet.

Noboru took a deep breath and said, "They were prepared to do their duty." Neji's anger was about to flare back up in his stomach at the concept but Noboru added, "As if that makes me feel any better. I should have done _my_ duty better, and thought of a more effective strategy. Hitomi -" Neji looked over in interest. Noboru looked at the ground. "She would have known what to do."

Neji reflected on this brief window into their dynamic, wanted to retort that _he'd_ seen a different Hitomi that very much did not know what to do, but instead offered, "I doubt there was any strategy that could have helped us in that pit. We did the best we could with what each of us had." He wasn't fully convinced of that last part, but maybe if he started saying it now he'd believe it by the time he had to face either General Mifune or Lady Tsunade. "I thought Iron wouldn't send anyone, owing to their neutrality," he commented.

"We weren't sent," Noboru answered, "I came of my own accord."

Although this improved Noboru in Neji's eyes a fraction, he was suddenly too preoccupied with the contrasting thought that the Leaf, by comparison, was not tied down by neutrality and could therefore have sent help but had not. However much logic defended the possible reasons why, he couldn't help but feel indignant about it. A strange feeling of abandonment, almost, however juvenile that was for a jonin to feel. In fact, there was juvenility in how much _feeling_ he'd been subjected to overall that he'd be happy to be rid of.

Neji's mood was not improved by Noboru's adding, "How could I just stay back? What kind of fiance would I be?"

Neji stood and just as abruptly said, "We cannot stay here. We need to determine the nearest large settlement that's likely to have medical-nin."

Irritatingly, Noboru stood too and followed him back to the others. "Surgeons - doctors - right? Sorry, I'm not familiar with shinobi terms. But I agree with you."

The closer he got to Hitomi laying there on the ground, the stronger the tugging on his inner lodestone. Distances struggled to retain any accuracy in Neji's mind. "I'm assuming Iron only has traditional doctors. A traditional one may not be quick enough if there's internal bleeding here." He crouched beside Hitomi. _Back to the Leaf…_

Tenten, sitting anxiously on a root nearby, seemed to read his thoughts. She scowled at him. "At this point both Iron and the Leaf are practically the same distance away - too far. The terrain in backtracking to the Grass capital is too much as we are, so we'd be better off heading north to the Hidden Waterfall Village."

"It'd be better not to involve other -"

Tenten stood, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him after her some distance away from the others and behind some bushes. Out of sight like this, she slapped him hard. "Listen to yourself! We don't have time for whatever it is that's going on in there or there," she poked his forehead, his chest. "I'm sick of it. This whole thing has been botched enough - let's at least have Hitomi not die, how about that? Because she's going to, if we don't get her to the nearest -"

"I know that!" he burst. "Do you think I want that?! I…" Neji was surprised by how disorientated and despairing he felt. He continued more quietly, "I'm trying to make this work."

"What exactly are you trying to make work?" Tenten asked, her voice reedy. When he couldn't answer with anything more than turning away and groaning, she pushed herself in front of him and repeated, "What are you trying to make work?" She caught his face between both hands and forced him to look at her, "I never thought I'd say this to you, but - put it away. You have to put it away."

Seeing her tears washed his own eyes clear, if only for a moment. He saw the tiredness of her face, the dryness of her lips, the redness of her eyes. He'd grown so used to her face it was hard to know when it'd changed. She'd grown. They all had. Moreover, he saw the unwavering care - and what he'd taken for granted. Guilt swelled; his half-conversation with Lee in the Glade came back to him. He felt sorry for her - no, awful for her. How much had she been suffering while he was still so consumed with his own?

 _We still need more time, don't we, for things to become clear? Or are they already clear?_ he thought. _Either way - whatever any of us feel - she's right. I have to put it away._

Neji placed his hands on Tenten's at his face, held them there at his face for a precious second - felt the familiar callouses all the more clearly - and then lowered them, released them. He breathed deeply, calmed. Afraid of saying anything more, he turned and walked back around the tree and hoped she'd understand. She always seemed to. And he'd try - truly - for her sake if not for his own or the mission.

Lee was refilling the spare canteens Tenten had brought out earlier; at Neji's approach he gave him a reassuring smile and thumbs up. However commonplace the gesture Neji couldn't help but feel like Lee had done it knowing what had been said and what Neji had thought. It helped him fall back into himself, remember who he was and what they were here to do.

"We're going north, to the Hidden Waterfall Village," he said, mostly to Lee.

As though still under some kind of magnetic pull, Neji's eyes found Hitomi. It was a queasy mix of unsettling and reassuring to see that four or five moths had come out of seemingly nowhere and settled on her body, their chakra glowing faintly and seeping into her skin. Like that night on the dock, one sat on her eye cavity and gently raised and lowered its wings.

Noboru gently tucked a finger under one moth on her hand and set it down elsewhere with a few kind words Neji couldn't pick out, and then continued with what he was doing - washing Hitomi's scraped and bloodied hands with a scrap of his shirt. A wholly unnecessary task and thus, done purely out of love. The tenderness of his movements and expression gnawed at Neji, threatened to make him take back what he'd wordlessly promised to Tenten. Instead, he forced himself to regard it as proof that the relationship between two of them was stronger, if by nothing else than virtue of years. They were familiar to each other, he realized, in the same way he was familiar with Tenten. Looking down on them now was like looking in a strange mirror. Tenten probably would have washed his hands a knuckle at a time, given half the chance, for no other reason than she wanted to. The true question was would he have let her? Would Hitomi have let Noboru do this were she awake?

 _Unfortunate for you both,_ he thought of Tenten and Noboru, _to waste your tenderness on those of us who are cold. However starved for it we are._ A prick of the needle in his sleeve reminded him of Hitomi tenderly opening his palm and working at the splinters, how alien that seemed for her now yet how soothing it'd been for him. How much of all this, and most of all himself, had he misunderstood? He felt like he'd been under yet another genjutsu.

Noboru noticed him, finally. "We're leaving?" he suggested when Neji had said nothing for an awkward period of time.

"Yes. Are you comfortable carrying her still?"

"I'd carry her all the way back to Iron, if I had to," he smiled.

Neji bit down on too telling of a retort and said instead, "You're in our charge now just as much as she is, Lord Maeda, so let us know if you tire."

"Just Noboru," he somehow managed to laugh. "I'm no Lord yet. Not really." He secured Hitomi's katana to his belt and began to make quick work of other preparations.

"As you wish."

"We can make it easily!" said Lee. "We can follow the river, too, so we can rehydrate."

"Let's hurry, then," Tenten said, appearing beside him. She did not look at Neji. "Some moths are still attracted to her, huh? Maybe that's a good sign."


	22. The Bridge

**Chapter 22: The Bridge**

"I'm sorry, I should have better-remembered the topography," said Noboru.

"It's okay!" reassured Tenten. "I'm sure you had a lot more on your mind."

Hitomi tried to breath carefully. It was a miracle she was conscious - helped in no small part through leaching nature chakra via the moths she came across - but there was no telling how long it'd last. Yet she couldn't stand to not know what was happening, even if it meant she was very conscious of the direness of her condition. Though some of the pain had subsided, to try to keep her mind off the rest of it she focused straight ahead on the bridge.

Rope and old planks, rickety-looking, painted with lichen and moss. It stretched over veils of mist soaring up between the two sides of what she guessed was a gorge - she couldn't tell how deep it was from where she sat, propped up by Noboru, at the treeline but judging by the relative softness of the rushing of the river, it was significant. She didn't have the strength to add her thoughts to the discussion - not that she could remember much from the last time she'd passed through here in her travels, only that it seemed they were headed in the general direction of the Hidden Waterfall Village.

"I'm not feeling confident about that bridge, though," Tenten added.

"We avoided it when we rode this way," Noboru acknowledged, "but the next nearest one, that we took, is about a day's ride away."

"It's taken us five hours to get this far," Neji said, and Hitomi didn't miss the irritation in his voice. "Night's falling. Time isn't on our side."

Lee retracted his foot from one of the ropes, gave one of the anchor posts another smack and came back to them. "I don't think it can hold all of us at once, but we should be able to go over one at a time."

"Hitomi can't walk by herself," said Tenten.

"I'll carry her, then," said Noboru. "I'm light," he added more cheerfully.

She didn't have to see the shinobi to know the idea wasn't popular. It didn't sound like that good of an idea to her either if you looked at it strategically, but then -

"And if the bridge is going to break then it really doesn't matter who's carrying her. The gorge is too steep," Noboru voiced her thought. He squatted in front of her and carefully helped her climb onto his back again. "But just in case…" He took off his sash, looped it under and around Hitomi and then across his chest, where he knotted it. He stood just as carefully. Tenten picked up his bow and empty quiver that couldn't be on his back with her.

Neji hesitated, and then to her surprise, said, "I suppose you're right."

"If the bridge will be weakened over time by each of us going across, then they should go first while it still has most of its strength," Lee suggested.

"No time like the present," Noboru said.

He approached the bridge and stood at the rim of the cliff; Hitomi could see now that the gorge was deep indeed. The tumultuousness and narrowness of the water suggested an incredibly rocky bottom - a fall would likely kill them. The spray was cool on her exposed skin, the air seductively fresh.

The swell of his cheek told her Noboru was smiling, though he was looking too. "Don't worry, I've got you."

Though it pained her, Hitomi gingerly raised her arms to more securely wrap them around his neck. She clasped her wrists. Just in case. "I know," she managed.

Noboru took a deep breath, and started across. He deliberately walked somewhat bow-legged to spread his weight; with his hands free he could run his hands along the rope as he went. He took each step slowly, testing each next one before fully depositing their weight. Some planks were already missing, a couple splintered and broke underfoot as they went, making their hearts race. The ropes strained and creaked. At the lowest point of the bridge the planks were too rotten to be stepped on, so Noboru strained and used both rope sides instead. Hitomi could feel the sweat seeping through his shirt as his muscles surged with each heaving step.

Once they reached the drier planks, Noboru caught his breath and resumed his prior process. "This is turning into quite the leg workout," he huffed. "I'm used to the horse being my legs."

Despite herself, Hitomi smiled.

In both of her peripheries something flashed past along the ropes, wiping the smile from her face. "Nobu -"

Behind them, first one side and then the other of the end of the bridge snapped. Hitomi felt their footing fall away and they began to drop. The shinobi shouted. Noboru cursed, his limbs flailing. She could do nothing and this realization was loud in her head; she held onto him hard.

Noboru's arms snapping into rigidity. Something pulling them down, yes, but also forward toward the gorge wall. Noboru's cursing now a growl. Hitomi realized he'd grabbed hold of one of the ropes, and together they braced themselves.

He took the brunt of the impact with bent legs and they bounced a couple of times, their heads spinning. Hitomi felt her bleeding start afresh and the impact nonetheless reverberated through her bones.

"Are you okay, Hitomi?"

"Yeah," she croaked a lie.

They looked up - the top of the gorge was maybe a few meters overhead.

"An arm workout now?"

Though he joked and as lucky as they were, she knew this was still bad news. Not only had they not recovered fully from the fight with Arata, but she was a dead weight that was bound to be a strain, even for an archer's arms. Moreover - something had caused the ropes to snap, and it wasn't their weight. She tried sensing for anything unusual but couldn't.

Noboru began to climb, one strenuous foot at a time. "I've got you," he repeated over and over, as much a mantra to himself as reassurance to her.

How long it took them she couldn't say, but eventually the sharp rosy-amber of the sunset cut across the cliff face and, shortly thereafter, warmed the back of their necks. Noboru hauled them over the edge and they turned to face the sunset, squinting at it in relief.

"Oh thank goodness, you made it!" Tenten yelled at them across the gap.

"Something made that bridge snap," Neji shouted. "Stay there until we can get to you and be on your guard. We're going to backtrack to lower land and cross there. Don't move, understand?"

"We'll be here," Noboru shouted back.

Hitomi watched the pale shapes of the shinobi run back the way they came and disappear into the shadows of the trees. She felt exposed without them despite Noboru's presence. Her situation felt even more urgent, her wounds even deeper, her hold on the waking world even more tenuous. She began uneasily scanning the immediate area. Little more than an animal trail leading away from the bridge into the forest, no birdsong. She was surprised by the soft outline of a small, old, abandoned temple, just as there had been the abandoned house and its kamidana on the other side of the bridge she'd crossed with the shinobi what felt like forever ago. However, it no longer felt like an auspicious sign. She felt like her luck had run out.

"A temple," Noboru noticed her line of sight. "That'll be good shelter for a few hours." He stood on shaking legs and began heading for it.

"No," Hitomi suddenly said. The strength of her voice took the wind out of her sails.

Noboru made a questioning sound.

"We'll...stay here," she grated out.

Maybe it was the tightness of her grip still, but after a pause Noboru agreed. He crouched again and began working at the knot of his sash; when it proved too tight to untie, he cut it with her katana. Hitomi was gently unbound from him and lowered to sit against the anchor post of the bridge.

Noboru stretched. "I'll find wood for a fire, then," he tried smiling.

"No," Hitomi said again.

His indulgence of her seemed to wear a little thin. "We need a fire, Hitomi. It'll help them find us again if not keep us warm."

Hitomi's eyes darted over the area, perturbed by how normal it all seemed despite what had happened to the bridge. But he was right, after all. "Then...just...stay where I...can see you. Please. Something...isn't right." Not that that was much better - she could barely move herself, even if something were to happen two feet away.

While Noboru began to forage in the nearby bushes around the bases of the trees, moths began to drift out of the forest and over to her, settling on her. Though the process was slow and she didn't want to leach them of their own energy, Hitomi welcomed the tiny drinks of chakra they struggled to channel for her. She tried to focus on her breathing and direct her chakra to her wounds, keep a steady eye on Noboru.

 _He came for me. Even after all the time I've been gone - and before that, when I didn't treat him as anything more than a friend - he risked his life to find me. I doubt he was sent. They couldn't send anyone. So he's risked his reputation, his status. He...loves me._ Warmth for him eased the paranoia eating at her mind. It wasn't love. She wasn't sure she knew what love was. But maybe one day, it could be. _Oh Nobu, I'm so sorry. I don't deserve you. And what's waiting for us, back in Iron?_

But she knew what was waiting for them. Provided her grandfather still held sway and this incident did nothing to alter their course, then a wedding waited for them. Given time, an inheritance awaited them. Iron itself awaited them. All of this would have been a fever dream. There certainly wasn't a Colony waiting for her, or the title of Sage. No shinobi of any kind. No friends. And the 'home' she had dreamt Neji taking her to? She still didn't know where that was. She was no better off, no wiser, than when she'd left Iron. Her destiny was in shambles.

 _I wanted it all. Now that I lived past the Shining Week, it seemed feasible. I could still die out here but if I don't, then how possible is it to still have both my inheritance of Iron and, somehow, my inheritance as Sage? The latter I'd have to rebuild somehow. Is that possible in Iron? Or...the Leaf…_ she remembered the cave, Neji asking her to go back with them. Did he still think that? It seemed unlikely - the Hidden Waterfall was closer to Iron than to the Hidden Leaf. She recalled the coldness of his eyes the few times he looked at her these past couple of hours, felt the absence of her right earring. _But it is their mission, ultimately. I was foolish to think -_

The undergrowth in front of her exploded with black. The kid, Jurou, was leaping at her out of a shattered shell of carbon, his respirator replaced with a grimace of hate. An obsidian-black knife was clutched in one hand. Noboru had dropped the kindling and was leaping, too, her katana in hand. Jurou reacted surprisingly quickly; he spun and in a deft twist that reminded her of Arata, managed to disarm Noboru with the far shorter knife. Noboru recoiled with a slash on his wrist. Jurou leapt at him again. They collided and fell to the dirt, scuffling in the dim light. Despite their age and size difference it was rapidly apparent that Jurou had had more hand-to-hand training. The moths on Hitomi fluttered frantically.

Hitomi tried to reach her katana, which lay a few feet away, but couldn't. Tried to form her chakra into something, anything, even with a hand sign, but couldn't. "Nobu! The katana!"

When this had no effect she heaved her body with renewed vigor. She slumped to the ground and began to drag herself along it, crying out in pain the entire way.

They landed close to her - Noboru on his back, Jurou on top with his knife at his throat. Noboru strained to hold it back.

Truer panic than she'd felt when the bridge collapsed seized Hitomi. Her eyes grew wide. _He's going to die if I don't do something._ Their childhood together flashed before her in a second. _I can't lose you. I don't have anything else left._

Blood began to dribble down Noboru's neck. Jurou seethed on top of him, pouring all of his strength into bearing downward.

A matching frenzy took over Hitomi. The moths on her beat their wings rapidly; a few more flew out of the bushes and trees and alighted on her, too. She felt her chakra surge through them as she raised herself, scowling, and reached for Jurou. She barely heard the sizzles of the moth bodies drying into husks and falling to the ground.

 _How dare you._

Nobu's eyes on her.

Her hand on Jurou's back, frighteningly gentle. His head turning to look over his shoulder. His eyes on her.

 _How dare you._

Her chakra reaching into him. She only needed one spot. She closed her eyes.

 _How dare you._

Like a second hand her chakra took hold of that fierce muscle of his heart and stilled the force of its beating, shocked him motionless. He began gasping. His body reacted, began to swipe at her -

All at once, she took the movement she'd absorbed and multiplied it tenfold in those tiny chambers, felt the muscle explode under the pressure. The boy simply dropped without a sound, and seemed to take the last of the sun with him.

Hitomi's skin tingled with a not unpleasant warmth for a few moments. She felt heavy, nearly devoid of all chakra, but remained sitting upright. Her slack hand slipped into her lap. Yet as she watched Noboru slip out from under Jurou's body, it looked like the ground was tilting. She began to feel dizzy even as her gaze testily moved upward to a tree trunk - it felt like the world was spinning. Nausea crept up from her stomach into her esophagus and a moment later, she vomited. She pressed one hand to the wound in her side - her bandages were soaked through again.

Noboru was there, one hand on her shoulder and the other holding her face, getting her to look at him. "You're all right," he said. When he repeated it again more strongly she realized there had been the dregs of fear in his voice. Fear of her.

Though he hadn't asked and though it didn't make it better, she said, "I held his heart, and then I let it go." She frowned at Noboru's shirt as she considered this. Her thoughts were becoming jumbled. Whose heart? When? When did she let it go? Images of Neji in the cave flickered in her periphery, fluttering like moth wings. Where was she? Why?

"Hitomi."

She looked up. Noboru held her eye for a long time, though it was hard for her to stay focused on his own. Gradually, though, the spinning and the nausea passed. This seemed to calm Noboru, too. He helped her back to the bridge post, slowly wandered a few steps away from her and looked around at Jurou's body, the tinier bodies of the moths she'd bled dry, the dropped firewood, her katana. The mess of it. In the twilight she saw his fists clench.

"You've always been smarter than I am," he said, confusing her. A pause, and then he continued, his voice charged, "Everything I've done over the past two years you've been gone has been to make myself better for you, to better serve you and keep you safe. And I think I love you, Hitomi, even if that doesn't mean anything to you - but I think it does."

He was right, and she resented herself for taking this long to realize it.

"So if it does, even a little, then please listen to me just this once: we have to keep what you just did a secret. Even from the shinobi. If we don't, it doesn't matter what army I'll give to you when we're married, and it won't matter who your grandfather is. If they know what you can do - that you killed a kid with no hesitation, and by leaching other living things to get the power to do it - then they won't care about your motives. They'll condemn you. So please…"

He turned to face her. She had difficulty picking out his features in the dim light. The headiness and surprise she'd felt earlier dissolved into affection stronger than any she'd felt for him before. She meant it when she said, "All right."

She thought she could see him smile weakly. Then Noboru hesitantly picked up Jurou's body and walked toward the cliff edge.


	23. Dreams and Realities

**Chapter 23: Dreams and Realities**

The campfire that had seemed maddeningly small nearly an hour ago grew bigger as Neji, Tenten, and Lee raced through the dark trees. The three of them were still on edge from the bridge breaking - though they'd ceased talking about it, they'd agreed that something on this side of the river had made it break, and that making the far end break instead of the near end was too deliberate for a simple kill. Neji had remembered Jurou escaping into the forest; Lee had countered that he was a boy and likely didn't have enough left in him after the fight to do much else. The fire seemed to confirm it.

They had been running parallel to an underkept road and soon came across an animal trail that headed up the hill in the direction of the fire; they took it and kept pace all the way to the top. The glow reached through the trees and drew them inward to the small landing and at last they stopped, catching their breath.

"You're all right, thank goodness," Tenten heaved, propping her arms on her head.

"Did anything happen?" Neji asked.

Hitomi was on her back, her head propped on Noboru's outstretched legs and one hand holding her katana across her chest. Her eyes were closed but her breathing was too heavy to be in sleep. If it weren't for her bloodsoaked bandages they could have simply been traveling somewhere on a whim.

"Nothing," Noboru said. "Unless you count me nearly getting stung by a wasp."

"He's allergic," Hitomi said, barely audible above even the modest crackle of the fire.

"We should keep moving," Lee said, and Noboru began to carefully sit Hitomi up in response. Tenten hurriedly killed the fire.

Before they left, however, Neji noticed a small area of disturbed earth half-under the fire, where Noboru and Hitomi had been sitting. Close to it was a shriveled insect - on closer inspection, a moth, half smashed into the dirt. He frowned.

"Neji?"

"Coming." He slipped back into the dark and took the lead.

* * *

 _(Five days later)_

General Mifune and Captain Kohaku sat still as stone overlooking the courtyard garden; their untouched tea was growing cold between them and the General felt what little he'd eaten at their lunch sit sourly in his stomach. The two gardeners were at work before them, one clearing out dead foliage from around the sculpted trees and the other laying fresh gravel. He envied them, though he was not a man of envy. He knew their children, their families, to be whole and safe.

Though they'd been in constant communication over the matter even moreso since Noboru fled with six retainers, the General said, "No news, then."

"None."

Their voices were weak; lately they had stopped pretending to the other that their children being gone had not leached them of their strength. Even the Leaf was unable to provide any reassurances and both Lands seemed unsure what to do. The General wondered if the Leaf shinobi's parents were sick with worry too - or whether they even knew, or whether they were used to it. He himself thought that he would be used to it, having gone for two years with no clue as to Hitomi's whereabouts; he resented having been given hope, having had that hope renewed too, and then having nothing follow it but silence.

"It is strange to me," the General mused, "how fear can corrupt your trust in your child's abilities. I never experienced this with Osamu, even with his sickness making his every step a risk."

"Lady Hitomi is bolder than her father was… and if I may venture, more talented." Kohaku paused. "For my part, I never experienced this with Noboru's elder brothers either. I never thought I would. It is not in his character."

The General grimaced a little to himself. The guilt over this had been gnawing at him ever since his captain had informed him that Noboru had left without warning. "I'm sorry."

Kohaku took a deep breath. "There is no need to be, my general. I am proud that he has taken his path in his hands, wherever it leads him. There is still time yet."

Thumping footsteps rushing closer grabbed his attention; although not unusual - nearly every day he was receiving new information on the movements of the other two Iron Generals, who were growing restless, or the possibility of war - he half-expected it to be a trick of his memory and turn to see Hitomi, or Osamu. Instead it was a servant. The joyful look on his face was what was unusual. What was there to be joyful about, nowadays? Even the promise of a tenacious Iron spring fell short.

"Sir! Sir! Lady Hitomi approaches the gates! She's returned, Sir!"

"What?" He stood so quickly their tea was knocked into the garden.

Kohaku's armor rattled as he jumped to his feet, too. "And my son?"

"Yes!" The servant nodded, tearful. "Lord Noboru, too. They are with the shinobi. Outriders saw them. They are at the gates as we speak!"

"Open them," the General said, and then repeated it louder, more excitedly. Kohaku was saying something to him but he was already rushing through the house that was coming alive in the wake of the news. Heedless of shoes or other formal attire, he exited the front veranda of his manor and seconds later a horse was in front of him. Ahead, through the open gates of the estate, he saw a guard headed down the curving road to the tall gate of Okami no Tanya. The General mounted and tried to catch a glimpse of his granddaughter in the peridot-green fields beyond the gates that so matched her eyes, still streaked with snow.

Someone hit his arm; he turned to Kohaku astride his own horse, smiling. They jabbed their heels into their horses' flanks and darted out of the estate. The wind clipped his ears as they galloped down the hill. A bruteish voice soared over the excitement of the capital, calling for the gates to open - it seemed to be an echo from the mouths of the tarnished silver wolves emblazoned on the gates, caught in a roar. The General felt his heart roaring too in his chest; joyful tears were streaming down his cheeks and flying away from his jawbone.

 _She is home! She is home!_

The huge drums in the watchtowers either side of the gates took up a fierce pounding, this time in greeting instead of warning; the gates themselves creaked and crept open. The main road either side of him was growing thronged with the townspeople.

Through the shadow of the gates strode a single horse and rider and three figures on foot. In the shadow it stopped and someone got down, presumably from behind the rider, and took the reins. Into the brilliant sunshine the bright cobalt of Noboru's jerkin emerged; even at this distance General Mifune could tell the boy was smiling. And atop the horse was Hitomi - _at last!_ \- sitting tall in a bright haori, her loose hair whipped by the wind and the ivory hilt of her father's katana a pearly stud at her side. Slightly behind her walked the three Leaf shinobi. While the General wondered at the absence of the six retainers that had gone with Noboru, it was difficult to think on it for long. He and the captain slowed their horses to a canter and met them on the road.

Kohaku leapt down from his horse and unabashedly grabbed his son into a crushing embrace, before bowing deeply at Hitomi just as the bystanders were now doing. Hitomi's eyes were, however, fixed on those of her grandfather.

The General could scarcely believe she was really back home. Although it had only been two years since he had last seen her, she had changed. He kept atop his horse for a moment more to see past her sad, small smile into the severe face that was beginning to take after his own, try to see what it was that had turned her into a young woman behind his back. And even now, how composed she seemed! How bumbling he felt in comparison! She looked like a shinobi, but also very much an heiress of Iron and both pleased him. Perhaps there had been good to come from her absence, and he had been too blind to see it.

He slid from his horse and walked to her; he didn't fail to note how gingerly she dismounted - was she injured? He gently took her rough, cold hands in his own and could barely stop his lip from quivering and the tears from brimming in his eyes, and was grateful for the horseflesh that blocked them partly from view.

"No shoes, grandfather?" she teased softly.

The General stifled a sob and embraced her. He felt whole again when her arms wrapped around his back and squeezed.

* * *

Hitomi thought that when all was said and done she would be grateful to fall asleep in any bed, and likely sleep for days, but as comfortable as the futon in her old bedroom was her mind would not keep quiet. There was not only the alienness of the room and indeed the house and Iron as a whole, and not only the preying thoughts of what she had done to Jurou, but the strangeness of her own skin. Given a small incentive - which her grandfather was already acting upon - the Hidden Waterfall Village had saved her life, but she still felt on death's doorstep.

She sighed and threw off her blankets, shakily rose. The world span a little, just as it had done after the force-change jutsu that had stopped Jurou's heart, and she braced herself and waited for it to stop. Her skin tingled. When it seemed safe to continue she threw on a warmer over-kimono, took her oil lamp, and crept out of her room in the direction of the east garden. With her rooms so far into the manor it was difficult for moths to find her, and she wanted to soak in the moonlight and their company and let them both recharge her while she tried to empty her head.

The east garden was painted in shades of silver, navy and plum, the moon reflected by a small koi pond that mirrored the shape of the Three Wolves in the distance. Night creatures, alerted by her lamp, scurried into the camellias and petals whispered to the ground. Hitomi folded her robes beneath her and sat down, placed the lamp beside her. She took a few minutes to offer up a genuine prayer for Jurou. Afterward, she breathed deliberately and carefully to assess her wounds, though the doctors had done so thoroughly. It gave her something to concentrate on. A breeze knocked the chime of a bell and cooled her cheek.

 _What now, Hitomi?_ she asked herself.

She raised a hand as a moth drifted to her, settled on the scraped knuckles she offered. It offered her a tiny drink of nature chakra in turn; she was reluctant to accept it, knowing what she had done to its kin days ago in the name of saving Noboru.

 _What are you now, Hitomi?_

Her hand lowered to the other in her lap; she closed her eyes. She felt the minute tickle of other moths landing - one on her collarbone, one on her forehead, another with the first on her hand.

For the first time in a long while, she had a pleasant memory of her mother. Some lesson or another that, as a child, had frustrated her. She'd whined for help for hours. However harsh at the time, her mother's words rang true now: _"No one's going to tell you. You have to decide for yourself."_

 _I suppose you're right this time, Mother._

She felt a presence approach but, after determining who it was, did not open her eyes. She heard him sit beside her a short ways away, and they did not speak for several minutes.

 _They leave tomorrow. He leaves tomorrow._ She felt a tug in her gut that wasn't from her wound. Despite having achieved greater clarity regarding her feelings toward Noboru, things still felt unresolved with him, with - "Neji," she said, and opened her eyes to the garden.

"I'll go, if you'd prefer."

"No." She contemplated the Three Wolves for a few moments, gathered strength from them. "May I be honest with you?"

"I'd welcome it, if I may be honest with you," he said, and though the addendum intrigued her she did not miss the bite that still remained.

She supposed he was right; she had not been truly honest, no matter if she had been unable to be for reasons not under her control. "I'd welcome it," she echoed.

"Was it you that snapped the bridge?" he asked.

This was unexpected, and she nearly laughed. "Why would I do that?"

He thought before answering. "I can see how it would be...difficult. Feeling like your way of life was gone. Not knowing who you were after the Shining Week."

This was a different approach than she was used to from him. She was used to the shouting, the demands, the insistence that she could be more than what she claimed. Not gentle understanding. "Perhaps I listened to you, because it wasn't me that snapped the bridge. I did not want to die."

"In that case, then...there were signs of a scuffle. A dead moth. Something happened."

She looked at him directly, her face emotionless. "Nothing happened." A smirk for effect. "Except the wasp."

He held her gaze, and she knew that he knew. Maybe not all of it, but he knew. Somehow, for better or worse, she didn't mind.

"That's not being honest with me," she said. "You're the one that's supposed to tell _me_ something, if you ask if you can be honest."

Neji looked out into the garden. The moonlight turned his profile into the finest alabaster. "I meant it when I suggested you come back with us to the Leaf. Part of me still does - it's why I didn't want to take you to the Hidden Waterfall Village - but I know now that you should stay here."

She voiced the rest of it, thinking of what she had to tell him in turn. "With Noboru."

He stiffened ever so slightly. "And with your grandfather. With Iron. If you were to follow me you'd be following me to war."

"War isn't certain, but if it were that wouldn't deter me," she said and looked at the moths in her hands. "Yet...I think we both agree whatever it is that...draws us together isn't long-lived, or wise. We're very similar, and don't know one another as well as -" she cut herself off, losing her bravery. She did not remind either of them how peaceful she'd felt in that cave, or how peaceful she felt now. It was different than even the comfort she felt with Noboru. "I dreamt of you," she admitted, trying again. "You were taking me home - though I wasn't sure where this 'home' was - and I let it sway me. I wanted it badly to be true. But that was just a dream. I've had my fill of them."

"Ku told me," Neji said, surprising her. "I don't dream often, so it was easy to be swayed by it, too. Genjutsu regardless."

Hitomi felt guilt gnaw at her. She remembered their kiss in the cave and pushed it away. But he'd asked her to be honest, and so she said, "It wasn't all a genjutsu."

"I know."

One of the moths started frantically fluttering its wings and so she lifted her hand, waited for it to take off. Nearly a dozen others were flitting about in the air, attracted by the light of both her lamp and her chakra. She wondered if all people could be divided thus - into moths, or light. Her thoughts roamed to Noboru, and Tenten. "I feel sorry for them," she mused aloud, and meant it.

"So do I. But not as much as I pity us."

She hummed a questioning sound.

"We're the ones that are too stupid to let them love us."

Hitomi smiled broadly, sadly. "We should work on that."

Another long pause, but a comfortable one this time. "What will you do, then, if you've had your fill of dreams?"

She breathed deeply in, relief and satisfaction and determination coming over her at the possibilities ahead. "Same thing you should do, Hyuga Neji: build a reality better than any dream." Her hand fell companionably onto his and squeezed it. "Thank you for everything."

* * *

 **A Note from the Author:**

Thank you everyone for your patience with updates! We've at last reached the end! Let me know what you think, as I have a sequel in mind if anyone is interested. Also, you've likely noticed that I took a couple of creative liberties with Iron itself - the capital name of Okami no Tanya (Wolf's Forge), its layout, and there being two additional Iron generals. These are largely for background work for the possible sequel.


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